THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

PRESENTED  BY 

PROF. CHARLES  A.  KOFOID  AND 
MRS.  PRUDENCE  W.  KOFOID 


PAPERS    FROM    PICARDY 


PAPERS 
FROM    PICARDY 

BY    TWO    CHAPLAINS 


THE   REV.    T.    W.    PYM,   C.F. 

CHAPLAIN  OF  TRINITY  COLLEGE,  CAMBRIDGE 

AND 

THE  REV.  GEOFFREY  GORDON,  C.F. 

AUTHOR  OF  '  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  WAR  ' 


SECOND    IMPRESSION 


LONDON 

CONSTABLE   AND   COMPANY   LTD 
1917 


Printed  in  Great  Britain 


TO 

CERTAIN   OF  OUR   FRIENDS 

WHO  GAVE  THEIR  LIVES  FOR  ENGLAND 

IN   REVERENT  AFFECTION 

AND  TO 

THE  PROSPECT  OF  THE  NEW  ENGLAND 

FOR  THE  HOPE  OF  WHICH 

THEY  DIED 


TZ4T1 


PREFACE 

THESE  papers  owe  their  title  to  the  fact  that 
they  were  written,  for  the  most  part,  during 
the  fighting  on  the  Somme  in  the  summer  and 
autumn  of  1916.  They  are,  however,  the  result 
of  experience  gained  not  only  there  but  in  other 
parts  of  France,  in  Flanders,  and  in  a  soldiers' 
hospital  at  home. 

We  do  not  pretend  to  have  written  without 
preconceived  ideas.  No  one  who  has  any  settled 
opinions  can  seriously  make  that  claim.  We 
write  as  commissioned  officers  in  the  Church  of 
Christ,  and  are  to  this  extent  prejudiced  that 
we  have  an  unshakeable  conviction  that  Christ 
alone  holds  the  key  to  the  social  and  individual 
problems  which  the  war  is  forcing  on  our  notice. 
We  have,  however,  sincerely  tried  to  see  facts 
as  they  really  are,  and  to  record  them  without 

b  ^ 


viii  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

any  effort  to  twist  them  to  suit  our  theories. 
If  anywhere  in  these  pages  we  have  seemed  to 
state  our  deductions  as  though  they  were  incon- 
testable, let  the  difficulties  of  writing  and  revising 
under  the  conditions  of  active  service  be  our 
explanation  and  excuse.  That  such  is  not  our 
object  the  many  question  marks  with  which 
these  pages  are  so  plentifully  besprinkled  should 
afford  sufficient  evidence.  Our  purpose  through- 
out has  been  at  all  costs  to  state  the  truth  so  far 
as  we  have  been  able  to  see  it,  and  not  so  much 
to  offer  clear-cut  answers  and  ready-made  solu- 
tions as  to  enlist  your  sympathy  and  to  stir  your 
thought. 

T.  W.  P. 

G.  G. 

B.  E.  F.,  November  1916. 


CONTENTS 
PART    I 

BY 

T.  W.  PYM 

PAPER  PAGE 

I.   SOME      CONSIDERATIONS     AS      TO     THE     VARYING 

EFFECTS  OF  WAR  ON  THE  INDIVIDUAL  .  3 

II.   A    COMMENTARY    ON    THE    SOLDIER'S    ATTITUDE 

TO  WAR      ......  18 

III.  A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  AND  IN  THE  INFLUENCE 

OF   REACTION          .....  $2 

IV.  DISCIPLINE— AND  AFTER?     .  .  .  58 
V.   SOMETHING  DEFINITE              .               .               .               .82 

VI.   POSTSCRIPT:    AN  EPITOME  OF  WAR  IOI 


PART    II 

BY 

GEOFFREY  GORDON 

VII.  THE  CHAPLAIN'S  DILEMMA  .          .  .  .      IO7 

VIII.  SOME  PRISONERS      .           '  .  Il6 

IX.  ACTIVE  SERVICE        .          .          .  .  .123 


x  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

FAPER  PAGE 

X.   HONOUR  WHERE  HONOUR   IS  DUE  .  .        136 

XI.   A  NIGHT  IN  THE  CRATERS  .  .  .159 

XII.    IN  A  REGIMENTAL  AID   POST  .  .  .         l66 

XIII.  WHAT  IS  TRUTH?     .  .  .  .  .174 

XIV.  WASTE  .  .  .  .  .  .180 

XV.   THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER  :   I.  ITS  FOUNDATIONS        183 

XVI.  THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER  :  II.  HOW  ARE 
THESE  FOUNDATIONS  TO  BE  PRESERVED  AND 
STRENGTHENED?  .  .  .  .196 

XVII.   A  CONFESSION  AND   A  CLAIM  .  .  .223 


PART   I 

BY 

T.   W.   PYM 


FIRST    PAPER 

SOME  CONSIDERATIONS  AS  TO  THE  VARYING 
EFFECTS   OF  WAR  ON   THE   INDIVIDUAL 

PICARDY  and  the  Somme  will  stand  for  all  time 
in  the  history  of  England  as  symbols  of  her 
children's  valour.  My  admiration  and  affection 
for  our  men  is  unending,  but  others  have  told  and 
are  telling,  better  than  I  can  hope  to  unfold,  the 
tale  of  their  glory.  Will  you,  for  once,  read  a 
book  which  nearly  takes  all  this  for  granted  ? 
There  are  doubtless  others  besides  myself  who 
care  for  them  enough  to  be  willing  to  go  deeper 
than  the  surface  brightness  of  their  great  achieve- 
ments and  their  long  endurance  —  to  consider 
those  of  their  virtues  not  popularly  acclaimed. 
And  more  than  this.  For  their  sake,  for  the  sake 
of  the  England  of  the  future,  their  England  as  it 
should  be  by  right,  some  of  us  want  to  examine 
dispassionately  and  bring  to  general  notice 
tendencies  and  influences  of  the  times  which,  if 


4  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

disregarded,  will  not  make  for  our  men's  truest 
happiness  when  they  return,  nor  for  the  highest 
welfare  of  the  England  that  is  to  be. 

By  going  to  the  wars,  by  the  offer  of  themselves 
in  life  or  death,  these  men  have  surrendered 
themselves  to  the  powerful  and,  as  many  hold, 
evil  forces  which  war  brings  in  its  train — of  which 
death  may  well  be  considered  the  least.  Some  of 
these  influences  it  is  the  purpose  of  these  papers 
to  define  and  estimate  in  their  effect  on  char- 
acter and  life  ;  but  there  are  reasons  why  such 
a  definition  and  such  an  estimate  are  beset  with 
difficulties,  for  the  war  has  produced  a  rare  crop 
of  amateur  psychologists.  People  who  before 
had  no  particular  reason  to  study  the  effect,  upon 
themselves  or  others,  of  the  varied  experiences 
of  ordinary  life,  now  meditate  and  prophesy  upon 
the  mental  and  moral  '  effects  '  of  the  world's 
chaos  on  classes  or  on  individuals.  If  the  war 
has  served  no  other  useful  purpose,  it  has  at  any 
rate  harvested  the  common-sense  of  Daylight 
Saving  and  has  stimulated  torpid  imaginations. 
So  far  so  good  ;  that  people  who  did  not  think 
much  have  started  to  think  more  is  satisfactory, 
but  the  result  of  their  reflections  is  sometimes 


THE  VARYING  EFFECTS  OF  WAR     5 

of  little  practical  use  in  assessing  the  amount  of 
change  that  has  been  wrought.  Men  and  women, 
of  whatever  class,  have  been  drawn  together  ; 
common  motives  have  linked  them  in  work,  vital 
needs  have  stripped  them  of  reserve.  The  newly 
fledged  psychologist,  blinking  his  newly  opened 
eyes,  sees  in  his  fellows  qualities  and  tendencies, 
virtues  or  vices  which  he  had  not  hitherto 
observed  :  the  roue  is  brave,  the  mechanic  is 
intelligent,  the  duchess  is  human,  and  the 
Socialist  patriotic  ;  the  private  soldier  is  heroic 
and  yet  cute — he  can  die  or  he  can  lie.  The 
man  whose  eyes  have  up  till  now  been  always 
closed  thinks  that  all  these  facts  are  new  and, 
staggered  by  the  transformations,  as  he  thinks, 
which  war  has  evolved,  he  lumps  his  observations 
together,  classifies  his  '  effects/  and  breaks  into 
song  about  the  future  of  the  State,  of  politics, 
or  of  the  Church.  He  might  just  as  well  go  to 
Vesuvius  after  an  eruption  and  comment  on  the 
alterations  in  the  crater,  which  hitherto  he  had 
only  known  by  photographs  taken  before  the 
eruption  from  the  other  side  and  studied  by  him 
upside  down  ;  as  to  change,  any  correct  infer- 
ences that  he  might  draw  from  a  subsequent 


6  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

visit  to  the  actual  spot  would  arise  from  good 
fortune  rather  than  good  sense.  There  is  little 
of  fortune,  and  still  less  of  sense,  in  the  observa- 
tions of  some  of  those  who  have  lately  gone  into 
the  prophesying  business,  and  this  is  particularly 
true  of  their  deductions  from  what  they  think 
they  see  in  the  soldier.  They  forget  that  what 
is  strangely  new  to  the  observer  is  not  of  neces- 
sity a  new  growth  in  the  observed  ;  they  have 
never  read  the  back  numbers  of  the  book  they 
are  now  studying. 

It  is  not  only  by  those  who  now  open  their 
eyes  for  the  first  time  that  we  are  in  danger  of 
being  misled,  but  also  by  those  who,  having  for 
long  used  their  eyesight  in  one  direction  only,  and 
perhaps  too  well,  have  developed  a  permanent 
squint.  Many  people  look  to  the  war  to  confirm 
all  their  pre-war  ideas  and  do  not  in  the  least 
realise  that  they  are  doing  so.  The  Socialist  has 
this  mental  squint — '  I  told  you  so,'  he  mutters  : 
'  State  Control.'  The  agnostic  squints  Jbadly — 
1 1  've  never  met  a  man  who  'd  been  in  trenches 
and  remained  a  believer.'  Many  a  devoted 
priest  can  only  see  '  the  immense  revival  of  the 
religious  sense  in  the  face  of  suffering,'  '  the 


THE  VARYING  EFFECTS  OF  WAR     7 

recognition  of  God's  wrath/  and  so  forth.  They 
are  like  the  young  man  who,  from  boyhood's 
breakfasts  onwards,  has  heard  his  father  crump- 
ling the  pages  of  the  same  newspaper,  wallowing 
in  the  shallows  of  its  political  bias,  and  splutter- 
ing out  over  toast  and  marmalade  that  such  and 
such  a  Cabinet  Minister  ought  to  be  shot.  In 
nine  cases  out  of  ten  the  son  goes  out  into  the 
world  unconsciously  eager  to  accept,  as  true 
evidence,  only  those  occurrences  which  coincide 
with  prejudices  thus  inherited  or  developed. 
A  severe  jolt  may  be  the  means  of  preserving  to 
him  intellectual  honesty  and  an  open  mind  ;  but 
if  there  is  no  jolt,  the  more  intelligent  he  is  the 
more  will  he  employ  his  brains  to  explain  and 
justify  rationally  that  which  by  no  process  of 
reasoning  he  has  already  accepted  as  part  of  his 
mental  equipment.  This  habit  of  mind  is,  I 
believe,  scientifically  termed  '  dissociation,'  and 
it  operates,  we  are  told,  to  a  greater  or  less  degree 
in  all  human  thought,  not  excepting  that  of 
philosophers  ;  even  where  consciously  detected 
by  its  victim  it  cannot  be  wholly  counteracted. 

These  then  are  the  two  difficulties  that  beset 
any  one  who  attempts  to  convey  an  impression 


8  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

of  the  marks  that  Active  Service  is  leaving 
upon  his  friends  :  (i)  To  avoid  jumping  to  the 
conclusion  that  others  are  really  changing  or  de- 
veloping, when  perhaps  only  his  own  previous  mis- 
understanding of  them  is  being  removed.  (2)  To 
remember  that  by  guarding  against  prejudice 
and  bias  in  his  own  case,  and  denouncing  it  in 
others,  he  does  not  automatically  become  himself 
impartial.  Nor  does  the  writer  of  these  papers 
admit  these  difficulties  in  order  to  display  his 
own  immunity  from  the  taint,  but  rather,  pain- 
fully aware  of  his  infection  with  the  disease,  to 
disarm  criticism  in  advance.  If  there  is  any- 
thing about  which  I  thought  I  knew  something 
before  the  war,  it  was  the  character,  mode  of 
thought,  the  capacity  for  both  good  and  evil  in 
the  young  man  of  the  day.  It  had  been  my  joy 
to  use  such  knowledge  as  I  thought  I  had  in  the 
attempt  to  help  him  in  more  than  one  class  of 
life.  Much  that  I  have  seen  in  him  during  the 
past  two  years,  much  that  might  be  due  to  his 
experience  at  the  front,  has  seemed  to  me  to  be 
merely  normal.  It  would  be  impossible  to  say 
exactly  how  much  of  change  in  him  is  due  to  the 
war.  I  do  not  know.  In  particular  cases  can 


THE  VARYING  EFFECTS  OF  WAR     9 

be  noted  undoubted  changes,  and  these  may 
indicate  a  more  widespread  effect  than  one  could 
dare  assume.  Where  I  have  been  tempted  in 
the  following  pages  to  say  that  '  such  and  such 
an  impression  has  been  stamped/  that  '  so  and 
so  will  follow,*  I  do  not  mean  to  dogmatise. 
Always  I  have  this  reservation — my  own  limita- 
tions— in  mind.  Let  the  reader  form  his  own 
conclusions.  For  again  I  admit  that  I  have  the 
mental  squint  of  my  kind.  I  wanted  to  see  the 
war  as  a  purging  influence.  I  believed,  and  still 
believe,  that  suffering  should  raise  and  not  lower. 
I  hoped  that  no  man  would  '  live  through  '  and 
return  home  anything  but  a  better  citizen — 
better  not  only  by  reason  of  past  achievement, 
but  in  potentiality  for  the  future.  Yet  I  have 
tried  to  free  these  pages  from  the  bias  of  this 
desire,  this  faith  and  hope  ;  not  because  of  an 
excessive  fear  that  these  emotions  may  not  find 
fulfilment,  but  simply  that  they  should  not 
influence  the  faithful  recorder.  Religion,  if  it 
be  true,  does  not  need  to  be  bolstered  up  with 
specially  selected  material.  I  believe  that  good 
will  triumph  over  evil.  My  experience  in  these 
months  of  war  has  strengthened,  not  lessened,  my 


io  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

faith  in  the  reality  and  power  of  the  Spirit  of 
God,  but  I  have  honestly  tried  here  not  to  press 
an  argument  to  support  such  beliefs.  We  are 
concerned  with  a  statement,  not  an  argument. 
In  token  of  sincerity  in  this  respect  we  will  start 
with  an  incident  of  some  weeks  ago,  which  I  have 
leave  to  repeat  in  outline  ;  it  could  so  easily  be 
twisted,  with  a  little  imagination,  to  serve  as  evi- 
dence in  a  court  of  special  pleading,  but  we  will 
try  and  assess  it  at  its  probable  value  in  fact. 

'  I  'd  never  thought  of  that  word  before,  sir ; 
it  had  never  struck  me.  But  as  I  marched  along 
that  road  I  couldn't  get  it  out  of  my  mind  ;  it 
kept  coming  back.  It 's  there  now.' 

The  road  was  that  described  elsewhere  ending 
in  the  '  Coin  de  Mort,'  flanked  by  its  blaz- 
ing poppies — '  Dead  man's  Corner ' — Flower  of 
Sleep.  The  speaker  was  a  sergeant  in  a  certain 
city  battalion.  In  the  early  days  he  had  thrown 
up  a  very  good  position,  left  his  mother  alone,  and 
joined  after  making  over  to  her  his  bank-balance 
and  savings,  so  that  she  might  not  be  compelled 
in  any  way  to  change  her  mode  of  living.  The 
word  which  he  had  mentioned  was  '  Anguish.' 


THE  VARYING  EFFECTS  OF  WAR    u 

'Yes,'  I  said,  'one  doesn't  often  hear  it.  In 
fact,  in  my  mind  it  has  only  one  connection.'  I 
pointed  to  a  small  unframed  picture  on  my  wall, 
'  Head  of  the  Christ '  after  Leonardo  da  Vinci. 
It  came  to  me  originally  as  a  Christmas  card, 
and  since  then  in  this  wandering  life  is  always 
the  first  thing  to  go  up  in  a  new  billet  and  the  last 
thing  to  be  taken  down  on  leaving.  It  goes  with 
me  sometimes  to  the  various  places  where  hastily 
arranged  services  are  held,  and  helps  to  form  a 
chancel.  It  brings  there,  to  me  at  any  rate, 
something  of  the  atmosphere  which  it  is  not 
always  easy  to  find  in  barn  or  cellar.  The 
sergeant  went  over  to  it  and  studied  it.  '  Yes, 
I  thought  just  the  same  ;  now  that 's  funny, 
isn't  it  !  ' 

He  was  not  a  church-goer  at  home  or  here, 
'  not  religious  '  as  he  put  it.  He  happened  to  be 
in  my  room  because  a  friend  of  mine  had  found 
him  in  a  distracted  frame  of  mind  and  had 
managed  to  persuade  him  that  I  might  be  of  use. 
And  so  I  was  in  the  one  r61e  which  is  always 
possible,  the  r61e  of  listener.  Like  countless 
others  in  this  life,  he  wanted  an  outlet ;  discipline 
kept  him  from  his  officers,  as  shy  pride  would 


12  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

have  kept  him  from  me  unless  he  had  been 
brought ;  he  couldn't  unburden  himself  to  his 
comrades,  for  that,  he  felt,  would  be  bad  for 
moral  ;  he  was  suffering  too  much.  His  great 
friend,  a  mere  boy  much  younger  than  himself, 
whom  he  loved  devotedly,  had  last  been  seen 
hanging  limp  on  the  German  wire  like  fly  on 
string.  For  the  company  had  had  two  '  shows  ' 
while  the  sergeant  was  on  leave,  one  defensive 
and  the  other  in  attack,  and  had  come  out  of 
them  no  company  at  all.  And  he  had  not  been 
with  them — there  was  pain.  Why  live  when 
they  had  gone,  the  men  with  whom  he  had 
shared  enlistment,  training,  and  exile  ?  Why 
had  he  ever  served  with  them  at  all  if  he  might 
not  serve  to  the  end  ?  And  while  in  England 
he  had  visited  that  other  home  and  learned  how 
great  was  the  love  there  for  the  boy.  He  had 
promised  to  be  father  and  brother  to  him  and  to 
do  much  for  him — too  late  ;  if  he  had  been  on 
the  spot  things  might  have  gone  differently. 
Here  was  anguish  !  How  could  he  write  home  ? 
What  could  he  say  ? 

No  one  could  have  heard  him  talk  and  doubted 
that  in  the  cry  of  his  soul — '  This  is  what  anguish 


THE  VARYING  EFFECTS  OF  WAR    13 

means  ' — he  was  suffering  the  acutest  heartache 
he  had  ever  known,  and  was  realising  it  as  such. 
There  was  nothing  of  the  dumb  unrecognising 
suffering  which  is  even  more  pathetic  ;  his  hurt 
was  so  intense  as  to  startle  him  into  self-con- 
sciousness. And  just  because  he  could  see  him- 
self as  a  suffering  being,  he  saw  for  a  time  the 
suffering  Christ  as  well.  An  understanding  of 
the  Passion  and  the  Atonement,  the  Great  Love 
and  the  Great  Sacrifice,  flashed  upon  him  ;  for 
a  time  only,  because  such  impressions  are  not 
lasting  out  here  and  such  sorrows  pass  away. 
Other  anxieties  will  distract,  other  suffering  will 
be  felt,  there  will  be  other  people  to  care  for. 
The  scar  will  of  course  remain — the  remembrance 
of  what  anguish  was  ;  and  if  all  this  had  happened 
during  his  first  month  in  the  country,  and  then 
he  had  been  wounded  and  gone  home  for  good, 
Active  Service  would  for  ever  after  have  meant  just 
that  one  grief  for  him  and  nothing  else. 

If  any  one  who  has  received  at  regular  intervals 
intimate  and  perfectly  honest  letters  from  any 
one  near  the  front  line  will  take  the  trouble  now 
to  re-read  them  in  the  order  in  which  they  were 
sent,  he  will  see  how  great  is  the  difference.  First 


14  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

impressions,  here  more  even  than  elsewhere,  go 
deepest.  Horrors  shock  a  man  because  they  are 
unusual,  rather  than  because  they  are  horrible  ; 
when  they  become  a  common  experience  they  do 
not  necessarily  become  less  horrid,  but  they  no 
longer  shock  ;  this  is  to  say,  they  do  not,  by  a 
merciful  providence,  create  as  deep  a  consciously 
felt  impression  the  hundredth  time  as  they  did 
the  first.  I  have  seen  much  horror  and  met 
much  tragedy  in  this  country,  but  I  could  not 
write  about  it,  I  do  not  feel  about  it  now  as  I  did 
at  first.  It  is  not  necessarily  that  people  become 
callous  ;  it  is  rather  that  what  first  outraged  their 
emotions  has  had  to  be  accepted  as  ordinary  life  ; 
those  upon  whose  emotions,  through  fear  or 
anxiety,  too  great  a  strain  has  been  placed  have 
broken  down  and  gone  away  ;  the  vast  majority 
who  remain  accept,  as  normal,  conditions  and 
experiences  which  they  know  at  bottom  to  be 
grotesquely  unnatural. 

So  it  may  be  with  that  which  we  call  Religious 
Experience  under  war  conditions.  Abnormal 
occurrences  set  a  man  adrift  from  the  ordinary 
channels  of  explanation  and  consolement.  He 
discovers  in  religion  something  which  he  never 


THE  VARYING  EFFECTS  OF  WAR    15 

before  felt  conscious  of  needing  or  capable  of 
understanding.  In  that  state  of  mind  religion 
steadies  and  comforts  him.  Had  he  in  the  middle 
of  a  normal  life  at  home  experienced  a  similar 
shock  of  sorrow  as  an  isolated  event,  the  effect 
of  the  remedy  afforded  by  religion  would  live  on 
just  as — if  not  just  because — the  experience 
which  had  called  it  forth  stood  out  in  the  memory 
as  unique.  But  in  warfare  so  protracted  as  this 
human  nature  has  time  to  adapt  itself  to  such  an 
extent  that  the  once  abnormal  becomes,  in  time, 
the  ordinary.  Such  an  adaptation  is  '  natural,' 
unconscious,  automatic  ;  no  remedy  produces 
it  ;  it  just  happens  ;  and,  generally  speaking, 
the  religious  sense  or  the  Christian  Faith  have  no 
part  in  it ;  and,  after  many  months  of  active 
service,  a  religion  which  was  once  a  welcome 
refuge  to  outraged  emotions  may  come  to  be 
regarded  as  an  intrusion  which  cannot  now  be 
justified.  It  may  even  be  treated  more  slight- 
ingly— much  as  a  man  will  despise  himself  for 
ducking  at  the  sound  of  his  first  bullet  nine 
months  ago.  That  is  to  put  the  case  at  its  worst, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  those  who  have  sincerely 
at  heart  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  in  the 


16  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

world.  It  is  not  pessimistic,  but  we  must  be 
disillusioned.  There  are  far  too  many  flam- 
boyant assertions  that  war  has  turned  man  to 
God  ;  such  assumptions  become  blasphemous 
when  they  add  that  the  Almighty  stage-managed 
the  war  with  this  particular  end  in  view.  Our 
ground  for  hopefulness  should  be  rather  the 
opportunity  which  will  remain  after  the  war. 
To  real  enthusiasm  such  opportunity  ahead  is  an 
infinitely  keener  spur  than  past  achievement — 
the  thought  of  what  the  war  may  enable  us  to 
do  rather  than  of  what  the  war  has  done  for  us 
already. 

The  opinion  of  '  effect '  as  stated,  even  sup- 
posing it  to  be  well  formed,  is  a  view  of  the  least 
hopeful  aspect  and  is  not  intended  as  a  general 
prophecy.  No  man  can  look  even  once  and 
briefly  to  the  Anguish  of  Christ  as  an  explanation 
or  palliation  of  his  own,  and  remain  the  same  ; 
the  old  indifference  must  be  weakened  in  its 
fortifications.  Any  man  must  be,  however  un- 
conscious of  the  fact,  a  better  man  for  having, 
even  once,  turned  to  God  in  an  agony  of  fear, 
remorse,  or  sorrow.  And  with  many  this  is  not 
unconscious  ;  often  it  underlies  the  utterance  of 


THE  VARYING  EFFECTS  OF  WAR    17 

that  password  into  any  soldier's  conversation — 
1  It  makes  a  man  think,  this  here.*  He  does  not 
understand  God s  any  more  than  he  understands 
himself  ;  he  could  not  work  it  all  out  here  and 
now  even  if  he  had  some  one  to  help  him  to  do  so. 
But  there  is  a  possibility  there  which  did  not 
exist  before.  And  in  some  cases — they  are,  I 
believe,  comparatively  few — a  man  has  so  found 
God. 

But  the  unreasoning  optimists  on  the  Christian 
side  had  best  remember  that  for  all  of  these 
people  the  expected  revival  of  religion  will  not 
be  automatic  ;  good  will  not  slide  out  of  evil  like 
mince  out  of  a  machine. 


SECOND    PAPER 

A   COMMENTARY  ON   THE   SOLDIER'S 
ATTITUDE  TO   WAR 

A  PECULIARLY  loathsome  day  in  November  was 
drawing  to  a  close ;  the  weather,  of  course,  was 
bad,  the  cold  bitter,  the  trenches  deep  in  muddy 
glue.  German  shelling  and  sniping  had  added  a 
mental  discomfort,  and  there  had  been  casualties. 
Somewhere  about  tea-time  a  setting  sun,  cold 
and  grim,  flickered  for  a  few  minutes  over  a  black 
sky  and  a  scene  of  desolation  that  only  Bairns- 
father's  pencil  could  reproduce.  A  malicious 
wind  heralded  the  approach  of  night  as  two 
private  soldiers  sat  down  on  the  fire-step  over 
the  remains  of  what  had  once  been  a  brazier. 
They  were  too  tired  to  say  much,  and  then 
suddenly  from  one  of  them  came  the  remark : 
'  All  points  to  'appiness,  don't  it,  Jim  ?  ' 

The  cheerfulness  which  in  this  form  is  such  a 
peculiar  characteristic  of  the  British  soldier  that 

18 


THE  SOLDIER'S  ATTITUDE  TO  WAR    19 

it  has  become  proverbial,  and  needs  to-day  no 
further  illustration,  yet  never  ceases  to  amaze. 
The  unconsciousness  of  it  is  the  really  heroic 
thing  ;  they  do  not  know,  they  do  not  even  think 
how  patient  they  are  ;  they  do  not  in  the  least 
realise,  as  they  '  stick  it  out '  month  after  month, 
that  their  cheerful  persistence  is,  in  this  pro- 
tracted form,  not  only  foreign  to  their  previous 
character,  but  indeed  a  miracle,  to  this  extent, 
in  human  nature  at  all.  This  persistence  is  the 
same,  only  more  self-conscious,  with  the  young 
officer — self-conscious  because  it  is  in  a  sense 
conventional ;  class- training  demands  it  of  him, 
and  Army  form  requires  him  to  set  an  example  of 
optimistic  equanimity.  But  there  is  often  much 
more  behind  ;  living  under  the  conditions  de- 
scribed above  they  often  say :  '  You  Ve  abso- 
lutely got  to  be  cheery  or  you  'd  go  under.  You 
simply  can't  afford  to  be  anything  else.'  Even 
when  winter  is  doing  its  very  worst  the  cheerful 
attitude  is  only  more  marked  amongst  officers, 
and  with  the  men  there  is  in  bad  times  less 
grousing  in  the  trenches  and  always  more  song  on 
the  march. 

Wonderful   though   this   has  been,  there  has 


20  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

appeared,  many  think,  one  disadvantage  arising 
out  of  the  courageous  cheerfulness  of  all  ranks ; 
that  has  been  the  effect  of  their  letters  home. 
Any  one  who  has  done  much  censoring  of  letters 
knows  how  most  of  the  men  conceal  the  discom- 
fort of  their  lives,  the  unspeakable  sights  around 
them,  and  the  risks  they  run — referring  to  the 
latter  in  a  sufficiently  flippant  manner  to  suggest 
that  they  are  but  a  distant  concern  of  their  own. 
There  are,  of  course,  exceptions  :  when  a  man  is 
having  a  fairly  easy  time  he  will  be  more  likely 
to  grouse  in  his  letters,  and  the  terrifying  effect 
of  shell-fire  and  the  scenes  of  carnage  in  and 
around  Rouen  or  Havre  have  produced  the  most 
highly  descriptive  correspondence  of  the  war. 
With  officers  the  same  effort  at  concealment  is 
absolutely  universal.  Wife  and  mother  simply 
must  not  be  allowed  to  be  worried  and  anxious 
about  their  loved  ones  more  than  can  be  avoided. 
1  Going  home  on  leave  ?  If  you  see  my  people 
tell  them  I  'm  first-rate,  having  the  time  of  my 
life.'  It  is  also  one  of  the  rules  of  convention 
and  refinement  that  nasty  things  must  be  kept 
from  the  women  ;  they  must  not  know  what  a 
battle  is  really  like  ;  they  must  be  saved  from 


THE  SOLDIER'S  ATTITUDE  TO  WAR    21 

any  appreciation  of  the  worst  horrors  of  war.  A 
Territorial  private  whom  I  know  went  home  after 
nine  months  of  very  active  service.  '  And  do 
you  mean  to  say  you  have  really  seen  a  trench  ?  ' 
said  his  aunt.  A  devoted  mother  under  similar 
circumstances  said  to  her  officer-son  :  '  Fancy 
that  you  've  heard  enough  bullets  close  enough 
to  be  able  to  describe  what  they  sound  like  ! ' 
Often,  of  course,  the  opposite  occurs,  and  people 
at  home  picture  their  friends  in  the  midst  of 
hardship  and  pressing  dangers  when  they  are 
having,  if  anything,  rather  a  pleasant  time.  But 
on  the  whole  such  remarks  as  those  which  I  have 
quoted,  incredibly  foolish  though  they  sound, 
are  fairly  typical  and  not  really  so  foolish  when 
you  come  to  consider  the  epistolary  pap  on  which 
the  speakers  had  been  fed.  While  such  ignor- 
ance among  friends  and  relations  redounds  ever- 
lastingly to  the  honour  of  the  soldier  who  has 
fostered  it,  it  is  nevertheless  a  disadvantage.  In 
the  first  year  of  the  war  it  had  its  share  in  blind- 
ing the  public  to  the  immensity  of  the  struggle, 
to  the  horrors  of  war  as  it  would  be  in  England  if  it 
came  there,  and  to  the  strength  and  determina- 
tion of  the  enemy.  It  also  disguised  the  true 


22  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

nature  of  war  itself.  Humility,  consideration 
for  others,  good-humoured  belittlement  of  suffer- 
ing or  horror  are  admirable  in  their  way,  but  war 
must  not  be  allowed  to  masquerade  as  tolerable, 
enjoyable,  and  glorious  when  it  is  chiefly  cruel 
and  degrading.  In  spite  of  letters  from  the  front 
war's  true  aspect  is  gradually  being  laid  bare  in  all 
its  ghastliness,  but  one  wonders  when  the  Press  of 
the  country  will  give  it  its  right  emphasis ;  per- 
haps not  until  war-correspondents  are  chosen 
from  the  ranks  of  serving  soldiers  and — putting 
wife  or  mother  out  of  consideration — permit 
themselves  in  the  interests  of  humanity  to  describe 
things  whole.  Meanwhile  the  unfailing  cheer- 
fulness of  our  soldiers  remains  in  itself  a  thing  of 
joy  and  is,  one  may  be  certain,  a  war  develop- 
ment that  will  live  on.  In  itself  patient  endur- 
ance of  hardship  and  adversity  was  not  created 
by  the  war  ;  that  has  merely  trained  and  stiffened 
what  was  always  there  and  brought  it  to  a  higher 
pitch. 

The  same  light-heartedness  affects  the  soldier's 
attitude  to  the  enemy.  Speaking  of  the  English 
non-commissioned  officer  and  man,  I  am  prepared 
to  maintain  against  any  one  that  they  bear  little 


THE  SOLDIER'S  ATTITUDE  TO  WAR    23 

ill-will.  Certainly  the  hardest  veteran  could  not 
accuse  them  of  lack  of  keenness  to  win  the  war 
and  to  win  it  by  killing  Germans  ;  that  is  the 
business  they  are  out  for,  their  whole  lives  for 
months  have  been  concentrated  on  nothing  else  ; 
it  has  become  their  natural  existence.  But 
there  it  ends,  and  after  they  get  home  again  they 
will  be  found  to  hate  a  German,  as  such,  less  than 
they  will  hate  war  itself  and  the  people  in  all 
countries  who  make  for  war  and  make  out  of 
war.  Their  attitude  on  the  subject  is  indicated 
in  many  ways,  chiefly  by  such  remarks  as  these, 
made  often  enough  within  a  hundred  yards  of 
the  enemy :  '  Well,  I  'spect  Fritz  wants  to  get 
back  to  blighty  and  'is  wife  and  kiddies  as  much 
as  us  chaps,'  or  '  It 's  queer-like  trying  to  knock 
out  a  chap  as  you  've  never  seen.'  Their  treat- 
ment of  prisoners  points  the  same  way  ;  when 
un wounded  they  are  regarded  as  objects  of  merri- 
ment quite  free  from  malice  ;  our  men  stand 
round  the  cage  and  toss  over  cigarettes,  partly 
out  of  kindness  of  heart,  partly  as  they  would 
throw  buns  to  bears  at  the  Zoo — for  the  sheer  fun 
of  it,  to  see  whether  the  prize  will  be  caught  or 
dropped  and  who  will  get  it.  I  once  passed  some 


24  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

Germans  being  marched  down  the  road  ;  an 
infantryman,  formerly  a  mechanic,  was  with  me  ; 
his  only  comment  was :  '  They  're  glad  enough 
to  be  getting  out  of  it,  and  I  don't  blame  them.' 
There  are,  of  course,  many  exceptions,  and  that 
spirit  is  not  universal,  though  common  enough 
to  be  quite  typical.  No  one  finds  it  easy  to  love 
his  enemies,  but  people  at  home  who  empurple 
fatly  with  hatred  against  the  Germans — while 
calling  themselves  Christians — should  blush,  if 
they  can  still  produce  a  blush,  at  the  example  set 
them  by  men  fighting  cleanly  and  dying  bravely 
on  their  behalf.  With  the  officers  the  attitude 
varies  ;  but  in  their  mouths  the  German  is 
rarely  described  as  *  Fritz  ' — the  Christian  name 
— but  usually  as  '  the  Hun  '  or  '  the  Boche.' 
This  again  is  partly  conventional ;  it 's  not  ex- 
actly good  form  to  stand  up  for  the  Boche, 
especially  if  the  speaker  or  any  one  else  present  is 
known  to  have  lost  brother  or  father  at  German 
hands.  In  part,  too,  such  a  designation  is  an 
attempt,  by  artificial  means,  to  stimulate  keen- 
ness in  the  speaker  or  others  for  a  business  that 
nobody  likes,  which  however,  to  be  brought  to 
a  successful  issue,  must  be  carried  on  with 


THE  SOLDIER'S  ATTITUDE  TO  WAR    25 

enthusiasm.  All  the  same,  I  don't  believe  that 
the  General  who  is  '  dying  to  get  within  range 
of  Cologne  Cathedral '  would  really  choose  it  as 
a  target  except  for  proved  military  necessity. 
The  attitude  of  personal  antagonism  to  the 
enemy  is,  of  course,  more  noticeable  in  the  senior 
officers,  and  age  and  rank  often  tell  nearly  as 
much  in  the  conversation  of  the  mess-room  as 
they  do  on  the  parade-ground. 

As  for  the  men,  they  do  not  for  the  most 
part  think  out  their  feelings  on  the  subject,  but 
one  who  did  so  made  such  an  impression  on  my 
mind  that  it  may  be  worth  repeating  (with  his 
full  consent)  what  he  said,  as  far  as  I  can  re- 
member it,  almost  word  for  word.  He  was  a 
young  private  of  the  new  armies,  well-educated, 
and  had  certainly  no  apparent  cause  to  love  his 
enemies.  *  Oh,  sir  !  I  know  I  Ve  killed  one  of 
them  !  It  was  so  funny.  I  was  on  guard  in  the 
front  line  the  other  night ;  and,  you  know,  it 's 
a  big  strain  when  it 's  just  beginning  to  get  light, 
and  you  're  sleepy  and  tired,  and  you  Ve  got 
your  eyes  fixed  so  hard  on  their  wife  till  all  their 
posts  look  to  be  moving  about  and  dancing  up 
and  down,  and  you  can't  tell  whether  it 's  men 


26  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

out  or  not,  and  fellows  sometimes  loose  off  round 
after  round — and  it 's  only  the  posts.  Well,  that 
morning  there  was  a  mist,  but  all  the  same  I  felt 
certain  it  was  a  man  I  saw  moving  about  and 
bending  down  as  if  he  was  mending  the  wire  or 
picking  things  up  ;  but  I  wasn't  certain  enough 
to  let  go,  and  it  seemed  a  pity  to  risk  frightening 
him  off.  But  I  daren't  wait  too  long — I  was  so 
afraid  some  one  else  would  see  him  and  get  him 
first,  and  I  wanted  him  all  to  myself.  And  then 
suddenly  the  mist  kind  of  drifted  away  just 
where  he  was  and  I  had  a  shot.  I  was  so  excited 
to  get  in  first  that  I  must  have  missed  him,  for 
he  just  raised  himself  up  a  little  and  looked  round 
and  then  went  down  again  ;  so  I  had  another  go, 
but  I  took  more  care  this  time  and  he  dropped 
forward  a  little  on  to  the  wire.  I  don't  know  if 
that  killed  him,  but  I  fired  off  round  after  round 
into  his  body — seven  or  eight  I  should  think ; 
I  was  so  excited  I  couldn't  stop.  And  he  was 
still  there  some  hours  later  just  as  I  left  him. 
Well,  you  know,  sir,  I  never  thought  at  the  time,  I 
was  as  pleased  as  Punch  to  think  I  'd  got  one  my- 
self. And  then  after  a  few  minutes — while  I  was 
having  breakfast — I  cooled  down  and  I  suddenly 


THE  SOLDIER'S  ATTITUDE  TO  WAR    27 

wondered  why  I  'd  done  it ;  I  don't  mean  why 
I  'd  killed  him — I  wasn't  sorry  about  that — but 
why  I  'd  felt  like  that  about  it.  It  wasn't  as  if 
I  'd  any  grudge  against  him,  and  it  was  taking 
him  unprepared — though  he  'd  have  done  the 
same  to  me,  I  know,  if  he  'd  had  the  chance.  I 
suppose  it  was  the  sport  of  it,  but  it  was  funny 
being  like  that.' 

Volumes  of  commentary  could  be  written  on 
that  story.  It  is  worth  noticing  just  where  the 
self-analysis  stopped  ;  there  was  nothing  un- 
soldierly  about  it,  he  did  not  regret  killing  ;  he 
did  not  allow  himself  to  picture  a  stricken  family 
on  the  Rhine,  with  himself  as  the  wrecker  of 
homes.  It  was  a  merciful  thing  that  this  boy, 
of  less  than  eighteen,  who  had  never  been  away 
from  home  till  he  enlisted,  was  spared  the  twinges 
of  self-accusation  which  I  have  known  others  to 
suffer.  But  it  was  an  ugly  incident  ;  it  cannot 
be  a  pleasant  thought  for  those  middle-aged 
men  of  all  nations  who  make  wars,  and  '  only 
wish  they  were  young  enough,'  etc.  etc.,  that 
they  send  out  the  youth  of  Europe  to  such  an 
experience  as  this — and  worse.  And  it  speaks 
much  for  the  refinement  of  an  English  home 


28  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

that  he  could  still  talk  about  such  things  even  as 
he  did. 

People  will  tell  you  of  this  or  that  battalion 
which  '  will  take  no  more  prisoners,'  and  they 
argue  from  it  an  intense  and  lasting  hatred. 
Intense  at  the  moment,  perhaps.  Blood  is  up ; 
mercy  has  not  been  shown,  so  mercy  shall  not  be 
given.  But  the  English  clerk  and  the  English 
working-man,  generally  speaking,  will  not  after 
the  war  harbour  the  enmity  that  some  of  the 
officer-class  profess  to  be  laying  in  store.  Their 
sense  of  humour  is  much  too  sure.  Also  they 
have,  so  to  speak,  '  been  there  before  '  ;  they 
know  from  civil  life,  much  better  than  most 
officers  know,  that  marionettes  dance  because 
people  with  brains  are  manipulating  wires. 
They  know  that  the  presence  of  any  particular 
batch  of  Germans  on  the  battlefield  is  in  itself 
no  proof  of  the  affection  of  those  individual  men 
for  war,  or  of  their  responsibility  for  producing  it 
and  running  it  by  atrociously  barbarous  methods. 
They  feel  that  Germans,  like  themselves,  are  in 
the  field  under  compulsion— actual  or  moral — 
and,  though  they  hold  with  intense  conviction 
that  the  German  is  wrong,  and  that  that  is  why 


THE  SOLDIER'S  ATTITUDE  TO  WAR    29 

they  mean  to  beat  him,  they  do  not  pile  fuel  on 
the  fires  of  hate.  Many  people  who  have  had  a 
better  education — not  so  much  officers  in  the 
field  who  have  learnt  to  admire  as  well  as  to 
dislike,  but  rather  middle-aged  men  and  women 
at  home  who  '  are  prepared  to  fight  to  the  last 
drop  of  blood  '  (i.e.  other  men's  blood,  while  they 
hate  from  armchairs) — these  people  '  will  never 
trust  a  Hun  again,'  '  can  never  forgive,'  and  so 
forth.  '  The  whole  Prussian  race,'  they  say,  '  is 
obsessed  '  ;  to  such  men  and  women  they  are 
all '  stinking  Germans.'  But  the  private  soldier's 
sense  of  smell  is  more  discriminating  ;  he  knows 
what  kind  of  German  stinks — and  why. 

Nor  would  the  committal  of  atrocities  by  our 
Army  be  convincing  evidence  of  a  vindictive  or 
unforgiving  spirit ;  a  great  deal  of  nonsense  has 
been  talked  and  more  thought  about  atrocities. 
Such  a  view  was  well  summed  up  to  me  by  a 
Colonel  whose  battalion — a  pattern  of  discipline 
— had  at  one  time  or  another  suffered  most  things 
at  the  enemy's  hands,  including  gas,  in  the  days 
when  gas  was  considered  an  outrage  of  cruelty. 
'  People  talk  about  German  atrocities,'  he  said. 
'  Well,  I  don't  know.  I  've  seen  my  own  men 


30  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

commit  atrocities,  and  should  expect  to  see  it 
again.  You  can't  stimulate  and  let  loose  the 
animal  in  man  and  then  expect  to  be  able  to 
cage  it  up  again  at  a  moment's  notice.'  These 
words  had  been  spoken  to  me  many  months 
before,  but  they  came  back  to  me  as  the  boy 
told  his  tale.  Performing  his  duty  as  a  soldier, 
trained  to  regard  the  shedding  of  human  blood 
as  a  necessity  rather  than  as  a  survival  of  elemen- 
tary savagery,  he  had  lost  control  of  himself ; 
what  he  called  sport  was  blood-lust,  and  in  a 
trifling  way  what  he  experienced  is  a  sample  of 
the  force  in  human  nature  which  may  make  a 
soldier  of  any  nationality  bayonet  an  old  man 
or  rape  a  woman.  Any  doctor  would  explain 
the  connection  between  the  two.  I  am  not  in 
the  least  concerned  to  defend  the  Germans 
themselves  from  the  charges  made  against  them 
of  cold-blooded  and  calculated  rapine  and  murder 
in  the  early  stages  of  the  war  by  land,  and  through- 
out by  sea  and  air.  I  am  not  arguing  that  or 
indeed  any  other  point,  but  am  simply  concerned 
with  the  effect  on  our  own  manhood  of  a  long 
period  of  this  kind  of  warfare.  The  effect  will 
certainly  be  great ;  are  we  right  in  assuming 


THE  SOLDIER'S  ATTITUDE  TO  WAR    31 

that  it  will  be  wholly  good  ?  I  do  not  think  so, 
though  I  do  not  agree  with  those  who  prophesy, 
as  a  result,  a  quicker  recourse  to  force  in  settle- 
ment of  future  disputes — economic,  social,  poli- 
tical— than  there  has  been  in  the  past ;  men 
and,  let  us  suppose,  women  too  will  be  less  and 
not  more  inclined  towards  physical  violence  of 
that  kind  ;  some  would  say  even  too  little 
inclined.  And  though  it  seems  that  such  strife, 
if  it  arises,  will  be  more  widespread  and  bloodier 
than  it  could  have  been  before  the  war,  yet  the 
moral  effect  of  war  upon  the  fighter  is  not  chiefly 
to  be  feared  in  that  direction.  But  the  reaction 
upon  general  morality,  and  particularly  upon 
sexual  problems,  will  be  in  some  respects  quite 
definitely  harmful.  Some  study  of  this  prob- 
ability will  occupy  the  next  paper. 


THIRD    PAPER 

A  STUDY   IN   CONTRASTS  AND   IN   THE 
INFLUENCE  OF   REACTION 

NOT  only  the  imperturbable  good  spirits  and 
kindliness,  but  also  the  gallantry  and  heroism  of 
our  soldiers,  have  been  placed  on  record  in  de- 
spatches and  in  the  many  unofficial  accounts  of 
battles  which  all  may  read.  Further  illustration 
of  either  is  unnecessary  ;  nothing  that  has  been 
said  or  written  could  exaggerate  the  wonder  of 
it.  In  theory  many  of  us  knew  before  how  they 
might  be  expected  to  behave ;  in  practice  we  are 
still  surprised  into  fresh  admiration. 

To  some  the  most  heroic  feature  will  always 
appear  the  unflinching  persistence  shown  month 
after  month  in  ordinary  trench-warfare  ;  sitting 
cold  and  lousy  over  a  German  mine,  waiting  for 
the  next  *  sausage '  or  the  next  fatigue,  living  a 
life  of  acute  discomfort  and  of  continued  and 
probable  risk  of  death,  with  no  glory  of  battle 

81 


A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  33 

— nothing  apparently  to  make  life  worth  living  or 
death  worth  dying.  It  is  this  very  splendour  of 
their  devotion  that  throws  into  stronger  relief 
the  damage  that  these  times  have  done  in  draw- 
ing out  or  deepening  in  them  other  qualities  and 
characteristics  of  which  it  is  impossible  to  speak 
with  pride.  But  the  men  themselves  would  not 
wish  to  be  described  as  saints.  Many  of  them 
admit  freely  that  in  some  respects  they  are  worse 
as  well  as  better  men  for  their  months  of  service, 
though  they  would  not  always  express  it  in  terms 
of  '  better '  or  '  worse.'  Having  very  different 
ideas  on  the  subject  they  would  in  many  cases 
be  almost  proud  of  some  of  the  failings  a  chap- 
lain might  think  he  detected  amongst  them. 
The  blend  of  good  and  evil  that  the  facts  present 
almost  defy  any  satisfactory  explanation  ;  we 
are  accustomed  to  the  contrast  of  good  and  evil 
in  the  complexity  of  human  character,  but  ordi- 
narily we  skim  over  it  as  a  disquieting  fact  which 
does  not  bear  close  investigation.  It  provokes 
so  many  disturbing  and  perplexing  questions, 
it  involves  such  nasty  probing  into  motives 
and  assumptions ;  it  is  awkwardly  upsetting 
to  theories  and  prejudices,-  and  does  not  even 

c 


34  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

promise  any  ultimate  satisfaction.  Thus  we  leave 
it  to  theologians  or  philosophers,  or  perhaps  to 
fanatic  reformers  with  their  one  eye  glued  on  to 
their  patent  receipt  for  all  ills.  And  we  are  the 
more  inclined  to  let  the  matter  rest  in  the  case  of 
the  soldier,  not  only  because  gratitude  should 
make  us  blind,  but  also  because,  as  we  have 
noticed,  '  the  good  '  in  him  is  so  gloriously  good 
that  the  explanation  of  its  blend  with  evil  will 
be  more  than  usually  difficult.  But  gratitude  is 
the  very  reason  for  which  the  attempt  must  be 
made,  and  there  is  one  very  obvious  explanation 
of  the  contrasts  ;  it  does  not  perhaps  cover  all 
the  ground,  but  it  reaches  far. 

There  can  be  no  temperament  so  equable,  no 
life  so  smooth  in  its  course  that  physical  and 
moral  reaction  plays  no  part  in  it.  We  may 
take  '  reaction '  as  the  technical  or  scientific 
word  for  that  experience  which  in  our  own  char- 
acters we  welcome  or  excuse  as  '  mood,'  and  in 
others  condemn  as  '  inconsistency.'  What  is 
noticeable  to  some  extent  even  in  lives  of  quiet 
passage  we  should  expect  to  find  a  much  more 
forceful  factor  in  the  lives  of  men  subjected  to 
violent  emotions  or  continual  strain.  The  con- 


A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  35 

tinual  strain,  mental  and  physical,  of  ordinary 
trench-life  should  be  by  now  sufficiently  within 
the  reach  even  of  meagre  imaginations  to  need 
but  little  further  description  here.  It  falls 
heaviest  on  the  commander  of  the  company  and 
platoon  ;  indeed,  victory,  when  attained,  will 
be  due  more  to  the  steadfastness  and  heroism  of 
these  people  than  to  the  work  of  any  other  rank. 
These  officers  are  the  nearest  to  the  enemy  ; 
they  are  the  last  connecting  link  between  the 
organising  brain  of  the  Army  and  the  man  with 
the  bomb  or  the  rifle  ;  they  are  the  leaders  of 
their  men  in  a  sense  more  actual  than  any  Colonel 
or  General.  Theirs  is  a  ceaseless  responsibility, 
in  most  cases  beyond  their  years,  and  it  is  borne 
in  the  face  of  work  which  in  its  technicalities  is 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  length  and  detail  of 
such  training  as  it  has  been  possible  to  give  them. 
They  are  literally  holding  the  line  of  the  Empire 
or  of  Civilisation  or  what  you  will,  at  a  distance 
of  perhaps  fifty  or  one  hundred  yards  from  the 
most  expert  fighter  that  the  science  of  warfare  has 
ever  produced.  Meals  and  sleep  may  be  taken 
when  they  can,  for  not  only  must  almost  every 
detail  of  their  men's  personal  comfort  and 


36  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

fighting  efficiency  be  superintended,  but  reports 
on  these  and  other  matters  must  be  compiled 
and  rendered  at  any  and  every  time  of  day  and 
night.  (See  '  The  things  that  matter '  in  Frag- 
ments from  France.)  These  conditions  of  daily 
life  are  worth  mentioning,  because  they  are  not 
such  obvious  claimants  upon  our  attention  as 
the  fact  that  the  officer's  trench  has  a  German 
mine  under  it,  that  he  must  go  and  see  what 
damage  the  last  shell  did  while  the  next  is  coming, 
or  take  out  a  patrol  or  wiring  party  and  watch 
the  wind  for  gas.  I  am  not  forgetting  the 
pseudo-happiness  of  some  trench-life,  the  com- 
parative relief  of  some  '  cushy  spot/  1  or  the 
light-heartedness  which  would,  in  the  very 
officers  themselves,  disclaim  the  foregoing  de- 
scription as  '  piling  it  on  too  thick/  I  maintain 
it  is  almost  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  strain  of 
average  trench-life,  exercised  at  any  rate  on  the 
subconsciousness  of  any  one  taking  part  in  it  for 
long  ;  it  has  no  glory  of  battle  ;  it  is  known  as 

1  I  am  not  sure  of  the  right  spelling  of  this  word  which  has 
become  so  common  in  our  spoken  language.  There  seem  to  be 
two  different  lines  of  derivation  by  which  it  has  come  into  its 
present  common  use  as  descriptive  of  anything  that  is  soft  or 
easy ;  one  is  from  a  Hindustani  word,  the  other  from  the  French 
*  coucher.' 


A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  37 

peace  warfare — ('  We  've  had  no  fighting  for 
seven  months'), — but  it  is  a  strain  which  the 
mind  and  body  of  man  were  not  designed  to 
undergo. 

Even  more  severe  is  the  shock  of  what  I  have 
referred  to  as  the  violent  emotions  of  a  battle 
as  affecting  officer  or  man  :  the  anticipation  in 
eager  excitement  and  expectancy,  or  the  per- 
fectly justifiable  instinct  of  natural  fear — the 
fear  of  being  afraid, — both  increased  by  the 
noises  of  the  factories  of  death.  Then  the  start, 
the  anticipation  turned  into  the  vehement 
exercise  of  one  or  both  of  the  most  elementary 
animal  instincts — desperate  self-preservation  and 
the  lust  of  blood  ;  and  then  perhaps  inaction 
with  scant  protection  under  a  devastating  bar- 
rage of  shell-fire,  the  most  searching  nerve  test 
which  perhaps  alone  has  power  to  distinguish 
the  old  regular  soldier  from  '  Kitchener's  man/ 

Against  a  background  of  such  memories,  vice, 
selfishness,  intemperance,  do  not  look  as  unlovely 
as  once  perhaps  they  did  ;  the  morally  and 
physically  revolting  side  of  sin  is  so  infinitely 
more  easy  to  minimise  or  disregard  through 
steady  inurement  to  things  which  superficially 


38  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

seem  uglier.  Meanwhile  the  pleasure  and  re- 
laxation of  vice  are  to  be  had  for  the  asking,  with 
the  added  zeal  of  contrast  to  the  rough  living, 
the  fear,  cruelty,  and  pain  of  what  has  gone 
before.  Many  officers  and  men  are  at  no  pains 
to  disguise  their  opinion  that  a  good  time  is  due 
to  them,  and  that  they  mean  to  have  it  whenever 
they  get  the  chance.  Their  intention  will  not, 
I  believe,  be  carried  out  universally,  not  at  any 
rate  in  the  sense  in  which  they  mean  '  having  a 
good  time/  using  this  phrase  with  regard  to 
immorality  in  the  narrow  implication  of  the  word 
alone.  But  let  us  take  it  in  its  wider  applica- 
tion— the  vice  of  self-centredness,  self-pleasing  in 
its  most  comprehensive  range  as  the  negation 
of  duty  and  service.  To  those  who  have  been 
privileged  to  witness  the  wonderful  perseverance 
and  self-sacrifice  of  our  soldiers  in  the  field  such 
an  attitude  is  pathetically  excusable  ;  mostly 
unexpressed,  it  could  be  worded  in  some  such 
way  as  this  :  '  I  Ve  done  my  bit  :  I  Ve  lived 
in  Hell ;  I  Ve  given  the  best  of  everything  ;  I  Ve 
crammed  into  the  war  the  sacrifices  or  discomforts 
of  a  thousand  lifetimes.  I  'm  going  to  look  after 
myself  now  that  I've  served  my  country  well 


A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  39 

enough.  How  can  I  manage  to  be  the  first  to 
get  home  and,  having  a  start,  pick  the  best  job  ? 
How  can  I  make  a  pile  quickly  ?  How  best  can 
I  spend  it  on  myself  and  family  ?  Where  shall  I 
live  most  comfortably  ?  How  many  pigs  can  I 
keep  ?  When  shall  I  be  able  to  afford  a  second 
car  ?  Where  can  one  get  the  best  dinner  in 
town  ? '  If  this  were  universal,  and  if  the  in- 
tention were  permanently  carried  out — bang 
goes  brotherhood,  bang  go  all  the  so-called 
lessons  of  the  war  except  militarist  lessons,  and 
back  we  are  in  the  old  state  of  things  and  worse. 
Close  acquaintance  with  death  has  much  to  do 
with  this  attitude ;  escape  suggests  to  the  re- 
flective mood  regret  for  lost  opportunities  in  the 
past — opportunities  of  good  or  evil.  A  man 
of  one  kind  thanks  God  for  deliverance  and 
leaps  at  the  fresh  lease  of  life  in  which  he  may  use 
such  time  as  is  left  to  him  in  order  to  fit  himself 
better  for  service  in  this  world  and  beyond. 
Another  man  merely  laments  that  he  has  allowed 
himself  so  nearly  to  pan  out  with  many  of  the 
1  joys  of  life  '  un tasted,  and  determines  to  make 
up  for  lost  time  on  his  next  leave  or  after  the 
war  ;  such  a  theory  as  this  is  often  not  argued 


40  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

out,  but  exercises  its  reactionary  influence  with- 
out passing  through  the  conscious  mind  of  the 
person  in  question.  And  this  second  class  is  far 
more  numerous  than  are  those  who  react  from 
Hell  to  penitence,  especially  if  we  include  men 
and  women  at  home  undergoing  a  war  strain, 
different  in  character  but  the  same  in  its  possible 
effect  on  them.  An  opinion  that  I  have  heard 
expressed  more  than  once — and  expressed  un- 
emotionally, that  is  to  say  without  any  moral 
or  religious  interest  attaching  to  it  in  the  mind 
of  the  speakers — is  that  the  general  standard  of 
personal  conduct  in  England  has  fallen  decidedly 
during  the  two  years  of  war.  This  opinion 
presents  an  impasse  which  I  do  not  propose  at 
the  moment  to  face,  but  if  it  is  at  all  true  it  strikes 
another  blow  at  the  optimism  of  those  who  speak 
of  the  regeneration  wrought  by  war.  Indeed,  it 
would  be  the  saddest  paradox  that  the  period  of 
most  self-sacrificing  and  united  service  on  all 
hands  in  the  nation  should  yet  coincide  with  a 
lowering  of  the  moral  standard  in  the  individuals 
who  compose  the  nation. 

The  reason  why  the  release  from  strain  or 
horror  reacts  in  a  larger  number  of  cases  towards 


A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  41 

evil  than  it  does  towards  good — for  a  time,  and 
only  for  a  time  as  I  believe — is  less  a  matter 
of  opinion  than  of  logical  deduction.  Let  us 
exclude  from  consideration  the  large  number  of 
men  who  live  by  a  definite  moral  system  which 
is  based  on  no  actual  religious  belief  ;  and  let  us 
suppose — to  clear  the  ground — that  the  reaction 
in  their  cases  would  be  half  in  one  direction,  half 
in  the  other.  The  remainder — who  constitute 
the  majority — either  believe  in  the  Christian 
faith  or  have  no  code  of  morality  beyond  con- 
vention, which  may  include  for  our  purpose 
instinct,  interest,  prejudice,  and  all  the  other 
things  which  serve  as  motives  to  action.  Now 
if  our  estimate  of  reactionary  force  in  this  ques- 
tion is  anything  like  being  a  just  estimate,  nearly 
all  the  men  who  come  under  the  last  heading — 
that  is  to  say  all  except  those  who  really  believe 
in  the  Christian  faith  or  have  a  definite  alterna- 
tive system  of  thought — may  be  expected  to 
react,  temporarily  at  any  rate,  towards  evil 
rather  than  towards  good  ;  and  by  evil,  let  us 
remember,  we  mean  at  least  self-interest,  the 
negation  of  service,  of  brotherhood  and  sister- 
hood. And  they  will  so  react  towards  evil 


42  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

because  they  have,  admittedly,  no  underlying 
principle  or  motive  of  sufficient  strength  to 
counteract  demoralising  influences. 

Christian  believers  remain  and  they  are  of 
course  the  smallest  class  numerically  ;  it  is 
always  amazing  that  any  one  can  succeed  in  per- 
suading himself  that  English  men  and  women 
who  believe  in  Jesus  as  their  Saviour  and  try  to 
follow  Him  are  in  anything  but  a  minority.  But 
even  all  the  Christians  there  are  will  not  return 
home  pining  to  use  the  remainder  of  their  days 
in  the  better  service  of  their  Master.  The  re- 
ligious motive*  if  it  is  to  be  strong  enough  in  men 
to  resist  other  forces,  must  spring  from  a  grati- 
tude, most  intensely  felt,  that  God  has  delivered 
them  from  the  snare  of  the  fowler  and  from  the 
noisome  pestilence  ;  that  he  has  heard  their 
prayer  '  Spare  me  a  little  that  I  may  recover  my 
strength  before  I  go  hence  and  be  no  more  seen.' 
It  is  probably  true  to  say  that  thankfulness  is 
the  surest  foundation  upon  which  virtue  and 
service  can  rest  ;  it  is  certainly  the  bedrock 
of  Christian  motive  :  '  Simon,  son  of  Jonas, 
lovest  thou  Me  ?  ...  Feed  My  sheep.'  '  In 
this  was  manifested  the  love  of  God  towards  us, 


A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  43 

because  that  God  sent  His  only  begotten  Son  into 
the  world,  that  we  might  live  through  Him.  .  .  . 
If  God  so  loved  us  we  ought  also  to  love  one 
another.'  As  sense  of  gratitude  to  an  employer 
makes  good  workmen,  and  gratitude  to  parents 
makes  a  good  son,  so  thankfulness  for  the  Cross 
—  a  realisation  of  what  Christ  has  done  for 
and  is  still  suffering  with  us — can  alone  make 
us  good  Christians.  Now  in  the  case  of  many 
out  here,  who  really  believe  in  Christ  and  in  the 
power  of  prayer  through  His  Name,  this  sense 
of  thankfulness  is  difficult  to  secure.  So  many 
men,  without  losing  their  faith,  find  it  difficult 
to  pray  ;  '  I  can't  say  my  prayers  in  the  trenches ' 
is  a  very  common  remark  in  letters  or  conversa- 
tion. It  is  no  more  proof  of  a  rejection  of  re- 
ligious faith  than  is  the  spontaneous  prayer  of  the 
careless  in  time  of  suffering  or  of  acute  peril  a 
proof  of  their  conversion  to  God.  Deliverance 
therefore  from  special  danger  is  not  attributed 
by  these  men  to  prayer,  partly  because  they  do 
not  realise  or  imagine  the  intercessions  being 
offered  for  them  at  home.  With  no  sense  of 
special  dependence  on  God  through  prayer  they 
cannot  fail  to  be  affected  by  the  spirit  of  fatalism 


44  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

which  alone  makes  endurable  the  lives  of  many. 
It  was  easy  enough  to  argue  from  an  armchair  in 
the  year  1913  against  fatalism  ;  it  is  neither  easy 
nor  reasonable  out  here  to  contest  the  one  com- 
fortable doctrine  which  is  the  support  of  an  in- 
numerable host  :  1 1  'm  not  for  it  till  one  comes 
along  with  my  number  on/  '  If  I  've  got  to  go 
I  Ve  got  to  go  ;  it 's  no  good  worrying.  I  'm 
what  'ud  be  called  a  fatalist,  I  am.'  The  accumu- 
lation of  evidence  before  them  preaches  the  same 
gospel  ;  the  law  of  chances  seems  to  work  in- 
exorably ;  if  a  man  is  in  the  firing  line  long 
enough,  sooner  or  later  he  will  be  killed  or 
wounded  ;  if  wounded  and  returned  to  duty 
often  enough  he  '11  find  a  grave  all  right  in 
Picardy  or  Flanders  in  the  end — good  and  bad 
alike  ;  it  makes  no  difference,  so  it  seems.  That 
is  how  the  men  feel,  and  small  wonder  ! 

To  the  officer-class  and  man  of  good  education 
there  is  a  further  difficulty,  one  acutely  felt  at 
the  present  moment.  We  have  recently  been 
engaged  in  very  heavy  fighting  and  have  lost  a 
large  number  of  our  friends  ;  those  who  have 
survived  do  undoubtedly  feel  a  relief  which  is 
akin  to  thankfulness,  a  sense  of  '  being  spared 


A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  45 

for  a  purpose/  but  at  present  it  is  very  hard  for 
them  to  return  thanks  for  deliverance  to  God. 
Better  men,  they  feel,  have  been  killed.  The 
shell  which  just  missed  A  and  B,  blew  C  and  D 
to  the  four  winds.  How  can  a  man  thank  God 
that  he  has  been  spared  while  his  best  pal  has 
been  taken  ?  How  can  he  attribute  his  own 
safety  to  God's  protection  and  return  thanks  for 
it  without  at  the  same  time  attributing  Harry's 
death  to  the  same  Agency  and  resenting  it  ?  If 
he  were  thoroughly  selfish  it  would  be  simple 
enough,  but  his  difficulty  in  the  matter  is  in 
exact  proportion  to  his  ^^selfishness  and  his  love 
for  the  friend  he  has  lost.  In  a  sense  the  greater 
Christian  he  is  the  harder  it  will  be  for  him — at 
any  rate  just  now — to  return  thanks  like  a 
Christian.  This  is  because  gratitude  springs 
from  instinct  or  training  rather  than  from 
reason.  There  is  often  little  enough  of  reason 
for  the  gratitude  which  we  expect  to  find  as  a 
natural  quality  in  a  child  towards  bad  or  in- 
different parents  :  in  fact,  the  whole  business 
of  filial  gratitude  is  illogical.  But  the  grateful 
person  does  not  stop  to  examine  the  motives  or 
intentions  of  the  man  or  woman  who  perhaps  has 


46  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

only  happened  to  be  of  use  to  him,  or  has  given 
him  pleasure  or  happiness  by  accident.  He  feels 
that  he  owes  a  personal  debt  to  the  music-hall 
artiste  for  making  his  sides  ache  with  laughter, 
irrespective  of  the  fact  that  the  performer  draws 
two  hundred  pounds  a  week  for  so  doing.  Either 
the  man  has  by  nature  what  is  called  a  grateful 
disposition,  or  he  has  been  brought  up  to  under- 
stand that  he  must  take  nothing  for  granted  : 
that  good  manners,  humility,  consideration  for 
others,  require  of  him  always  the  remembrance 
that  no  money  on  earth  has  the  power  to  buy  any 
man's  service  as  by  right  ;  and  so  on  and  so 
forth.  Where  such  training  has  been  absent, 
and  the  conditions  of  life  have  not  been  such  as 
to  give  a  grateful  instinct  a  fair  chance,  a  man 
thinks  much  before  he  brings  himself  to  thank, 
and  the  place  of  gratitude  is  taken — to  a  large 
extent  but  not  entirely — by  reason,  and  this 
is  assisted  by  pride :  '  Have  a  packet  of  fags, 
mate  ?  '  '  I  don't  mind  if  I  do,'  or  '  I  don't 
mind.'  Such  an  answer  often  conceals  real 
gratitude  for  little  or  big  things,  but  there  is  a 
reserve  of  pride  ;  reason  has  not  proved  the 
benefactor  disinterested  in  his  gift  ;  the  instinct 


A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  47 

of  gratitude  is  much  weaker  than  the  natural 
dislike  of  being  laid  under  an  obligation.  Such 
men  unconsciously  apply  the  same  cold  logic  to 
God's  dealings  with  them,  and  thankfulness  comes 
with  halting  steps.  God's  motives  are  harder  to 
fathom,  His  methods  more  difficult  to  under- 
stand. Even  the  believing  Christian  may  forget 
that  he  is  wrong  in  attempting  to  apply  to  In- 
finite Wisdom  and  Love  the  same  process  of 
cautious  examination  that  he  is  accustomed  to 
employ  in  his  dealings  with  human  character. 
Sincere  as  he  is,  to  the  point  of  ungraciousness 
in  his  dealings  with  men,  his  reverence  for  God 
demands  of  him  an  even  more  diligent  honesty, 
and  a  proud  humility  hinders  him  from  supposing 
that  God  can  have  made  a  special  intention  of 
saving  him  as  an  individual  out  of  a  multitude 
of  '  better  men.'  So  it  is  that  thankfulness  for 
mercies  bestowed  cannot  always  be  at  first  a 
really  sharp  spur  to  a  determination  for  renewed 
service  and  obedience  to  God  in  the  future. 

Up  to  this  point  we  have  studied  the  blend  of 
good  and  evil  possibilities  in  human  nature,  as 
displayed  in  the  soldier  of  to-day,  under  one 
heading — the  reaction  of  experience  upon  mind 


48  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

and  character.     That  force  explains  many  con- 
trasts which  would  otherwise  appear  grotesque 
or  impossible,  and  we  have  tried  to  forecast  the 
direction  that  it  may  be  expected  to  take.     It 
remains  to  take  notice  of  the  same  blend  at  closer 
range  where  it  cannot  be  explained  away  on  the 
same  grounds,  but  leaves  us  to  the  consolement 
of  the  Lancashire  proverb :    '  There 's  nowt  so 
queer  as  folk.'     The  private  soldier  combines  a 
self-protecting  astuteness — ('  You  can't  tell  the 
truth  in  the  Army,  sir  ;  a  man 's  got  to  look  after 
hisself  ') — with  the  directness  and  simplicity  of 
a  child.     The  most  valued  proof  of  friendship  I 
ever  received  from  a  soldier  was  a  reply  to  me  on 
questioning  a  private  as  to  the  accuracy  of  a 
certain  statement  he  had  made.     He  said,   *  I 
never  tell  a  lie  to  you,  sir.'     The  emphasis  on 
the  last  word  but  one  made  me  aware  that  I 
was  being  honoured  with  exceptional  treatment. 
Generally  speaking,  taken  en  masse  the  men  are 
difficult  really  to  know  well  and  to  understand, 
owing  to  this  habit  of  guarded  reserve  and  eva- 
sion ;    once  this  is  broken  down  by  trouble  or 
suffering  of  any  kind  they  display  a  childlike- 
ness,    quite   unsuspected,   which,    because   it   is 


A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  49 

unstudied,  is  much  more  truly  a  part  of  their 
fundamental  character  than  the  shrewd  and 
hardened  exterior  they  present  on  ordinary 
occasions.  Contrast  their  humorously  tolerant 
treatment  of  German  prisoners  with  their 
willingness  to  harbour  a  grudge  and  the  un- 
forgiving spirit  so  often  to  be  found  amongst 
themselves  ;  the  foulness  of  their  language  and 
conversation  with  their  wonderful  sense  of 
decency  and  their  perfect  courtesy ;  their 
acknowledged  disregard  of  truth  with  their 
genuine  hatred  of  all  humbug ;  their  rough 
scheming  selfishness  in  a  hundred  ways  with 
their  devoted  self-sacrifice  and  amazing  tender- 
ness. To  see  a  badly  wounded  man,  barely  able 
to  limp  out  of  battle,  stop  under  fire,  help  another 
man  to  his  feet  and  support  him  along  the  road 
is  a  sight  as  common  as  it  is  unforgettable.  The 
strange  blend  of  hardness  and  tenderness,  selfish- 
ness and  self-sacrifice — common  to  humanity,  but 
strikingly  apparent  in  the  soldier — can  best  be 
illustrated  by  two  instances  that  have  come 
within  my  knowledge  ;  I  do  not  wish  in  any  case 
to  argue  from  particular  and  perhaps  exceptional 
incidents  to  any  general  principle,  yet  to  my  own 

D 


50  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

mind  these  examples  represent  fairly  the  com- 
plexities of  the  private  soldier,  and  bring  us  face 
to  face  with  a  solution  of  the  difficulties  which 
this  paper  suggests. 

A  friend  of  mine  had  his  blanket  taken,  so  he 
watched  his  opportunity  and  took  another  man's. 
The  weather  was  bitterly  cold.  He  was  not  the 
least  ashamed  of  his  action,  nor  was  he  sorry  for 
the  man  he  had  robbed  even  when  he  found  that 
the  loser  was  sufficiently  scrupulous  or  clumsy 
not  to  replace  his  loss  in  a  similar  fashion.  He 
would  never  have  stolen  the  man's  money,  yet 
he  could  see  no  inconsistency  in  taking  what  was 
at  the  time  worth  much  more  to  either  of  them 
than  a  fistful  of  five-franc  notes.  Later  he 
risked  his  life  in  a  gallant  attempt  to  save  the 
man  he  had  previously  despoiled — not,  I  feel 
sure,  in  any  spirit  of  remorse  (that  may  have 
come  later) ,  but  for  the  simple  fact  that,  whereas 
it  would  be  unreasonable  to  suffer  cold  and  dis- 
comfort instead  of  another  man,  it  was  perfectly 
reasonable  and  indeed  necessary  to  risk  wounds 
and  death  itself  in  order  to  save  the  same  man's 
life.  Apart  from  the  intricacies  of  individual 
character,  influenced  by  convention  and  en- 


A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  51 

vironment,  an  explanation  of  this  incident  may 
be  found  under  the  heading  of  discipline  which 
forms  the  subject  of  another  paper.  The  fine 
courage  of  the  last  act  was  in  accordance  with  the 
discipline  and  training  and  the  traditions  of  the 
British  Army  :  the  theft  of  a  blanket  was  outside 
the  scope  of  discipline  ;  it  came  under  the  in- 
fluence of  no  tradition,  save  the  oldest  in  the 
world's  history — Getting 's  keeping. 

Here  is  another  instance  similar  in  character, 
but  on  a  larger  scale.  A  battalion  goes  over  the 
parapet  to  the  attack  leaving  packs  behind. 
Another  battalion  comes  up  into  the  same  trench 
in  reserve,  and,  while  waiting,  rifle  the  other 
men's  packs,  razors  being  in  chief  demand. 
Later  in  the  same  engagement  the  men  fight 
desperately  in  relief  of  the  very  people  whose 
razors  have  come  so  strangely  into  their  posses- 
sion. Such  an  occurrence — not  typical  of  general 
conduct  by  any  means — is  worth  quoting,  be- 
cause it  opens  the  door  to  a  question  of  great 
interest.  We  see  a  prodigal  offering  of  human 
life  ;  the  sacrifice  is  as  courageous  as  it  is  un- 
conditional and  whole-hearted,  Indeed,  the 
willingness  to  give  life  itself  appears  greater  than 


52  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

the  willingness  to  live  without  those  things 
commonly  accounted  to  make  life  worth  living. 
In  one  case  it  is  a  razor,  or  a  blanket  or  the  best 
billet ;  in  another  case  it  is  a  motor-car,  a  yacht 
or  a  savoury.  Years  before  this  war  the  pene- 
trating writer  of  an  '  Open  Letter  to  English 
Gentlemen,'  published  in  the  Hibbert  Journal, 
maintained  that  it  was  a  far  harder  thing  to  live 
for  one's  country  than  to  die  for  it — obviously 
so,  as  he  said,  since  so  many  more  were  found 
eager  to  do  the  latter  than  to  do  the  former. 
Many  a  man  of  ease  and  independence,  who  in 
days  of  peace  could  not  spare  from  his  amuse- 
ments the  time  to  acquire  first-hand  knowledge 
of  the  social  conditions  of  the  masses  in  an 
attempt  to  better  them,  has  for  many  months 
on  end  denied  himself  both  ease  and  indepen- 
dence in  order  to  learn  how  to  fight  and,  fighting, 
— if  necessary — to  die.  Many  a  man,  who  would 
not  have  given  up  a  shooting-box  for  one  year  in 
order  to  give  a  hundred  families  on  the  border- 
land of  destitution  the  chance  of  a  fresh  start  in 
the  colonies,  has  since  laid  down  his  life  in 
defence  of  shooting-box  and  slum-dwelling  alike. 
Hundreds  of  working-class  men  who  three  years 


A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  53 

ago  would  not  have  missed  the  final  of  the  cup-tie 
in  order  to  set  another  man  free  to  go  and  see  it 
instead,  have  since  made  the  supreme  sacrifice 
of  all.  And  there  is  really,  humanly  speaking, 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  in  these  respects  when 
peace  comes  again  we  shall — whether  rich  or  poor 
— behave  any  differently  ;  England  and  English- 
men and  Englishwomen  will  still  be  less  worth 
living  for  than  dying  for,  unless  the  lesson  is 
brought  home  to  us  ;  we  shall  not  even  deserve 
the  epitaph  that  might  be  printed  over  the  graves 
of  many  '  civilian  soldiers ' :  '  I  lived  for  myself  ; 
for  England  I  died.'  The  forces  of  reaction 
already  defined  will  tend  to  set  on  fixed 
lines  a  selfishness  that  before  was  hardly  self- 
conscious. 

The  contrast  in  character  presented  to  view 
by  this  probability  is  no  fair  instance  of  the  com- 
mingling of  good  and  evil  in  human  nature  ;  it  is 
evidence  rather  of  the  good,  and  the  good  alone, 
but  lying  fallow  or  misemployed.  Surely  no  one 
save  the  militarist  fanatic — ('  We  come  of  a 
fighting  stock  ') — would  pretend  that  the  high 
devotion  which  war  calls  forth  in  men  could  not 
be  better  employed  than  for  mutual  destruction. 


54  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

It  is  the  idlest  pessimism  to  say  that  only  war 
can  teach  us  self-sacrifice — and  that  this  fact 
forms  its  moral  justification.  Such  pessimism 
becomes  desperation  if  we  allow  ourselves  to  be 
persuaded  that  the  spirit  of  service  thus  evoked 
may  be  expected  to  last  only  '  for  three  years  or 
the  duration  of  the  war.'  The  real  truth  of  the 
matter  is  that  it  needs  a  great  cause  and  a  great 
appeal  to  bring  men  to  a  sense  of  their  respon- 
sibilities, and  those  who  argue  gloomily,  as  above, 
are  unanswerable  unless  we  can  point  to  causes 
which  shall  be  at  least  as  powerful  in  inspiring 
men  again  in  peace  time  to  give  of  their  best  as 
the  spirit  of  patriotism  has  proved  to  be  in  time 
of  war.  Then  pettinesses  will  disappear  and 
they  will  again  respond.  And  such  causes  in 
abundance  there  are.  If  justice,  morality,  faith 
and  honour,  the  defence  of  the  weak  are  accounted 
things  worth  fighting  and  dying  for  in  interna- 
tional relationships,  the  same  principles  should 
appear  worth  living  for  and  living  out  in  the  lives 
of  individuals.  And  this  in  all  the  manifold 
relationships  of  peace  time  :  industrial  justice, 
commercial  morality,  the  faithfulness  of  man 
and  the  honour  of  woman,  the  care  of  the 


A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  55 

Borstal  boy,  the  prostitute,  the  slum  child. 
There  are  causes  enough  and  to  spare  in  the  world 
as  it  was  and  as  it  will  be  yet  again  to  provoke 
an  indignation  as  keen,  an  enthusiasm  as  devoted 
as  that  which  roused  us  first  in  the  behalf  of 
Belgium  and  later  on  in  defence  of  all  of  our  own 
that  we  hold  dear.  War,  once  we  are  committed 
to  it,  unites  us  and  frees  us  from  the  political 
morass  into  which  we  plunge  all  our  ordinary 
problems  ;  cannot  there  be  afterwards  some 
other  cause  found  worthy  of  a  public  enthusiasm 
strong  enough  to  disregard  '  party '  alike  in 
Church  and  State  ?  But — more  than  that — 
war  tears  aside  the  cover  of  ignorance  and  con- 
vention, of  so-called  good  taste  which  always 
cloaks  the  world's  worst  misery  and  injustice  ; 
men  at  last  see  the  need  for  their  helping  hand  ; 
the  facts  are  forced  upon  them  ;  they  can  no 
longer,  in  full  view  of  their  country's  stress,  trot 
out  the  selfish  old :  '  Personally,  I  believe  all 
these  things  to  be  very  much  exaggerated  ;  in 
any  case  we  can  do  no  good  by  talking  about 
them.'  They  can  no  longer  say  that,  for  seeing 
they  began  to  care  and,  so  caring,  they  have 
served.  Will  peace  once  more  thrust  into  the 


56  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

background,  behind  the  walls  of  hospitals  and 
asylums,  in  prisons  and  mean  streets,  in  brothels 
and  doss-houses,  in  factories  and  ledgers  the  evils 
and  injustices  which  always  have  existed  and 
are  in  type  as  scandalous  and  wasteful  as  the 
ravages  of  war  itself  ?  At  any  rate  such  causes 
should  be  no  less  capable  of  inspiring  and  suc- 
cessful in  claiming  the  self-sacrifice  and  devo- 
tion which  the  events  of  the  last  two  years  have 
proved  to  exist.  Why  should  peace  obliterate 
the  thought  of  them,  descending  upon  us  like  the 
asbestos  curtain  at  a  theatre  with  its  recommen- 
dation by  convention,  its  pleasing  security,  its 
advertisements  of  good  things  to  be  enjoyed, 
and  its  obscuring  of  the  confusion  and  burning 
waste  that  lie  behind  ?  It  is  our  own  fault  if  we 
let  this  be. 

Many  of  those  who  have  given  their  lives  for 
England  gave  them,  not  for  the  England  of  1913 
and  1914,  but  for  England  as  she  might  be,  as 
one  day  she  shall — please  God  ! — become.  For 
that  ideal  they  have  gladly  died.  In  their  hope 
and  faith  those  of  us  who  survive  must  live  and 
work.  Their  sacrifice  must  be  made  worth 
while. 


A  STUDY  IN  CONTRASTS  57 

We  mourn — though  pride  is  mingled  with  our  tears — 

Our  best  and  bravest,  some  had  made  a  name 

In  other  fields,  and  some  were  new  to  fame, 

But  none  had  passed  the  springtime  of  their  years. 

A  tragic  waste  ?    To  these  the  vision  came 

That  they  should  lay  their  lives  down  for  their  friends ; 

And  shall  not  we,  surviving,  do  the  same — 

For  selfishness  and  malice  make  amends 

And  live  for  others,  when  peace  comes  again, 

As  these  men  diedl     Or  have  they  died  in  vain  ? 1 

1  C.  F.  A.  in  Cambridge  Magazine. 


FOURTH    PAPER 

DISCIPLINE— AND   AFTER? 

IN  reviewing  two  pamphlets  issued  by  the 
Liverpool  Fabian  Society  a  writer  in  the  Spectator 
lately  said :  '  The  Collectivist  authors  seem  to 
think  that  the  millions  of  soldiers  who  have  sub- 
mitted themselves  to  military  authority  for  a 
period  in  order  to  fight  for  civilisation,  liberty, 
and  all  the  amenities,  graces,  and  fair  things  of 
life  will  wish  to  continue  after  the  war  under  an 
authority  different  in  form  but  every  bit  as  strict 
and  peremptory.  We  can  assure  them  that  they 
are  wrong.  The  Englishman  accepts  discipline 
for  an  exceptional  reason.  He  will  not  accept  it 
as  a  desirable  thing  for  its  own  sweet  sake.  In 
spite  of  the  imperishable  glory  which  his  uniform 
has  brought  to  him,  the  soldier  at  the  front 
desires  nothing  more  than  to  discard  it ;  in  other 
words,  he  wants  to  return  to  his  own  individual 

58 


DISCIPLINE— AND  AFTER  ?          59 

life ;  he  wants  to  go  his  way,  unhindered  and 
uncontrolled,  and  make  his  own  choice  of  good 
and  evil/  We  have  yet  to  consider  this  whole 
question  of  the  use  and  effect  of  discipline  ; 
so  far  we  have  been  thinking  of  the  fighting 
man  only,  and  most  of  the  circumstances  that 
have  been  passed  under  review  are  such  as 
affect  him  alone.  In  turning  to  the  subject 
of  discipline  and  Army  life  in  general,  we 
come  for  the  first  time  to  an  influence  bear- 
ing on  every  man  or  boy  who  wears  khaki 
whether  at  the  front  or  the  base,  in  Tidworth 
or  Peshawar. 

In  the  calculation  of  future  tendencies  in  the 
social,  political,  or  religious  spheres  after  the 
war,  it  is  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  forget 
that  '  when  the  boys  come  home  '  it  is  only  a 
bare  majority  of  them  to  whom  most  of  what 
we  have  been  saying  will  apply.  When  we 
include  the  necessary  garrisons  of  the  Empire, 
the  reserves  of  men  in  training  at  home,  the  large 
numbers  on  lines  of  communication  and  at  bases 
behind  the  various  fronts,  we  can  see  that  the 
war  has  brought — broadly  speaking — only  two 
influences  in  chief  to  bear  on  the  whole  soldier- 


6o  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

manhood  of  our  country :  (a)  The  demand  for 
self-sacrifice  in  a  righteous  cause ;  (b)  Army  life 
and  discipline. 

With  certain  notable,  but  comparatively  rare 
exceptions — special  enlistment  of  men  and  special 
selection  of  soft  jobs  amongst  officers — the  man- 
hood of  the  country  has  shown  itself  willing  to 
make  any  sacrifice  required.  Countless  men  at 
bases  or  depots,  or  in  some  branch  of  the  service 
where  the  supreme  sacrifice  was  not  demanded 
of  them  were  anxious  enough,  when  they  joined, 
not  to  be  spared  their  full  share  of  risk.  And — 
more  than  this — they  have  continued  to  bear, 
month  after  month,  the  burden  of  routine,  doing 
work  in  which  the  irksomeness  of  discipline  and 
separation  from  home  has  borne  sometimes  more 
hardly  upon  them  just  because  these  troubles 
cannot  have  always  the  obvious  point  for  the 
man  behind  the  lines  that  they  have  for  the  man 
at  the  real  front.  The  point  I  wish  to  make  now 
is  that,  in  estimating  the  future  character  of 
England,  we  must  not  assume  in  days  to  come 
that  every  ex-soldier  we  meet  in  the  street  has 
faced  death  on  the  battlefield,  has  learned  the 
lessons  of  and  reaction  from  trench-life,  and  can 


DISCIPLINE— AND  AFTER  ?          61 

therefore   be   estimated   in   the   light   of   those 
considerations. 

All  those  who  have  worn  the  King's  uniform 
have  however  come  equally  under  an  influence 
hardly  less  mighty  than  the  experiences  we  have 
been  trying  to  weigh  ;  they  have  been  plunged 
into  the  common  life  of  the  Army  and  have  lived 
together  under  the  Army  system  of  discipline. 
Before  going  further  I  would  clear  the  ground  on 
one  point ;  should  any  old  Army  officer  read  the 
following  views  on  Army  life  and  discipline — its 
uses  and  effects — he  will  in  all  probability  dis- 
agree with  them  violently,  as  they  have  met  on 
occasions  with  opposition  almost  worthy  of  that 
description  when  I  have  stated  them  out  here. 
But  I  still  hold  to  my  opinions  as  against  theirs, 
and  submit  with  the  greatest  deference  that  their 
experience  of  discipline  is  chiefly  drawn  from 
their  knowledge  of  the  professional  soldier,  the 
main  feature  of  whose  life  is  discipline  for  seven 
years  or  for  much  longer  ;  patriotism  often  was 
one  of  his  motives  ;  the  prospect  of  possible  war 
was  always  a  consideration  ;  but  the  circum- 
stances of  his  immediate  future,  his  motives  for 
submitting  himself  to  discipline  and  therefore 


62  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

the  processes  of  his  mind  in  undergoing  it  were 
entirely  different  to  the  same  things  in  the 
1  duration  '  soldier.  For  he,  as  already  quoted, 
has  submitted  himself  to  military  authority  for 
a  period  only ;  he  has  accepted  discipline  for  an 
exceptional  reason  and  a  particular  purpose — to 
fight  for  civilisation  and  liberty.  The  regular 
soldiers,  those  of  them  that  are  left,  generally 
speaking,  want  the  war  to  be  over — and  nothing 
more,  both  officers  and  men  ;  if  they  do  not 
actually  love  the  Service,  as  the  majority  of  them 
do,  they  are  at  any  rate  content  to  remain  in  it ; 
it  is  their  working  home,  their  means  of  liveli- 
hood ;  apart  from  war  they  have  no  fault  to 
find  with  it,  rather  the  reverse.  But  with  the 
majority  of  our  present  Army  all  over  the  world 
it  is  entirely  different ;  Army  conditions  do  not 
touch  their  life  apart  from  the  present  time  of 
war  ;  '  the  Service  '  is  not  their  livelihood  so 
much  as  their  inconvenience  ;  they  have  no 
cause  to  love  Army  life  as  such — and  why  should 
they  ?  They  did  not  choose  it  as  a  recreation  or 
even  as  their  profession.  They  look  forward  to 
the  end  of  the  war  not  only  because  war  is  even 
more  distasteful  to  them  than  to  the  regular 


DISCIPLINE— AND  AFTER  ?          63 

soldier,  but  chiefly  because  they  want  to  return 
each  to  his  own  individual  life  ;  to  '  go  their  way 
unhindered  and  uncontrolled  and  to  make  their 
own  choice  of  good  and  evil.' 

I  have  every  reason  to  know  and  to  rejoice 
at  the  benefit  that  thousands  of  men,  including 
myself,  have  gained,  mentally  and  physically, 
from  the  comradeship  and  discipline  of  the  Army. 
Many  a  milksop  has  been  made  a  man  ;  many  a 
weakling  has  found  health  ;  wastrels  have  re- 
formed ;  selfish  brutes  have  learned  brotherhood 
and  self-sacrifice  ;  shy,  exclusive  people  have 
learned  to  '  muck  in  '  and  share  a  common  life  ; 
narrow-sighted  men  have  felt  compelled  to  unglue 
the  other  eye  ;  pride  has  been  humbled,  obstinacy 
broken,  barriers  removed.  All  these  benefits  are 
glorious  in  the  present  and  will  be  far-reaching  in 
effect,  but  in  these  papers  I  am  not  concerned 
with  them,  though  most  thankfully  acknowledg- 
ing their  existence.  They  are  passed  over  here 
because  they  are  so  obvious  ;  they  leap  at  us 
from  the  eyes  of  the  professional  optimists  ;  they 
shout  at  us  from  print,  and  it  is  not  because  I 
forget  them  or  belittle  them  that  I  do  not  try 
to  develop  the  thought  of  their  probable  trend 


64  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

after  the  war.  But  there  are  already  enough 
and  to  spare  of  apostles  of  the  '  regeneration 
wrought  by  war,'  who  think  of  little  else  but  the 
virility  of  the  fighting  man ;  who  deploy  the 
lessons  we  have  learned  in  tribulation,  no  matter 
whether  we  have  really  learned  them  or  not ; 
who  assume  a  New  England  because  they  hope 
for  it.  Some  others  of  us  desire  a  New  England 
and  believe  in  it,  no  less  keenly  than  they,  but 
have  less  in  mind  what  has  already  been  done 
than  what  remains  to  do  and  to  avoid. 

With  such  an  end  in  view  let  us  examine  certain 
disadvantages  that  appear  likely  to  emerge  from 
the  imposition  of  Army  life  and  discipline  upon 
the  nation  for  a  certain  definite  purpose  and  for 
a  limited  length  of  time  only,  and  let  us  start 
with  the  consideration  of  discipline.  When  a  man 
joins  the  Army  he  surrenders  his  personal  liberty, 
and  to  a  large  extent  his  power  of  choice  ;  at  any 
rate  the  field  in  which  he  can  exercise  such  choice 
is  largely  curtailed  —  fundamentally,  perhaps, 
not  curtailed,  but  for  all  practical  purposes  and 
appearances  very  definitely  so.  A  recruit  learns 
that  he  is  less  an  individual  than  a  part  of  a 
machine  ;  for  hours  a  day  he  is  trained  to  do 


DISCIPLINE— AND  AFTER  ?          65 

exactly  what  the  man  does  right  and  left  of  him. 
This  induces  the  habit  of  mind  by  which  a  man 
will  '  do  as  others  do '  when  off  duty  as  well. 
On  duty  it  is  discipline  which  suppresses  indi- 
vidual choice  ;  off  duty  the  influence  of  the  habit 
induced  by  the  previous  hours  of  discipline 
remains,  and  individual  choice  is  affected  by  the 
thought  of  the  machine.  Now  to  do  as  others 
do  under  a  system  of  rigid  rule  is  excellent  for 
the  individual  and  for  the  body  of  which  he  is  a 
member,  especially  when  there  is  a  great  purpose 
behind  the  system  such  as  the  service  of  a 
righteous  cause  in  time  of  war  ;  but  for  each  man 
to  '  follow  the  crowd '  (when  that  discipline  has 
been  removed  and  there  is  left  no  guiding  prin- 
ciple), for  each  man  to  take  his  standards  of  life 
from  the  common  practice  of  '  the  majority  ' 
around  him,  has  never  been  the  maxim  of  any 
great  moral  or  social  teacher,  and,  it  is  to  be 
hoped,  never  will  be.  There  is  no  doubt  a  ready 
answer  to  this  argument  ;  we  shall  be  told  that 
the  whole  virtue  of  external  discipline  is  that  it 
trains  the  victim  to  self-discipline.  It  is  true 
that  this  may  be  and  often  is  the  case,  but  to 
apply  such  a  generalisation  in  the  present  instance 


66  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

is  wholly  fallacious.  The  '  duration  '  soldier  has 
not  accepted  this  state  of  things  as  his  life ;  it 
is  a  role  assumed  for  a  special  purpose.  Take 
away  the  special  purpose,  give  him  his  freedom 
suddenly  on  leave  in  England  or  after  the  war. 
What  happens  ?  Artificial  restraint  has  gone  ; 
it  has  not  been  long  enough  imposed  to  mould 
or  alter  character  for  life  ;  but  it  has  been  long 
enough  endured  to  supplant  to  a  great  extent 
any  conscious  habit  of  self-imposed  restraint 
and  to  cause  the  man,  when  newly  freed,  to 
rebound.  And  rebound  he  does.  This  force, 
where  combined  with  the  reaction  from  plain 
living,  discomfort,  fear  or  horror — already  con- 
sidered in  these  papers — exerts  a  demoralising 
influence  whose  range  extends  far  beyond  the 
life  and  character  of  the  man  through  whom  it 
is  begotten.  In  Picardy  we  open  our  English 
papers  and  read  about  the  temptations  to  which 
munition  workers  and  soldiers'  wives  are  ex- 
posed ;  the  '  Increase  of  Juvenile  Crime '  is 
discussed  like  the  discovery  of  a  new  star  or  of  a 
substitute  for  petrol ;  '  men  of  the  world '  return- 
ing from  leave  aver  that  they  never  before  saw 
the  streets  of  London  so  stream  with  prostitutes ; 


DISCIPLINE— AND  AFTER  ?         67 

a  famous  General  finds  it  necessary  to  initiate  a 
campaign  against  the  increasing  suggestiveness 
of  certain  public  entertainments.  If  these  and 
other  marks  of  deterioration  about  which  you 
seem  so  concerned  at  home  are  true  signs  of 
the  times  you  may  have  many  explanations  to 
offer  for  the  state  of  affairs,  but  you  will  surely 
not  rule  out — for  sentimental  reasons — the  possi- 
bility of  the  explanation  just  given  as  contribut- 
ing its  share  to  the  general  effect.  If  any  one 
doubts  the  usual  influence  on  us  (with,  of  course, 
exceptions)  of  our  life  out  here,  he  can  ask  the 
honest  opinion  of  any  one  home  on  leave  ;  at  the 
best,  we  are  extravagant  and  self-indulgent  to 
a  degree  never  before  attained  ;  at  the  worst, 
temperance  and  self-control  have  gone,  and 
virtue,  jealously  guarded,  has  fallen.  Numbers 
of  the  best  and  finest  of  our  youth  of  all  ranks 
have,  during  leave,  made  their  first  real  step 
down,  experienced  their  first  loss  of  self-respect 
directly  owing  to  one  or  both  of  two  causes  : 
(a)  the  relaxation  from  a  temporary  discipline 
imposed  from  without ;  (b)  the  excitement  of 
rebound  from  discomfort,  sorrow,  ugliness.  And 
for  all  such  lapses,  whether  in  rest-billets  or  in 


68  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

England  the  war  is  the  ready  pretext  :  '  Things 
are  all  so  different  now  ;  it 's  only  for  a  time  ;  I 
shall  settle  down  again  some  day/  or  '  I  've  never 
done  it  before,  sir,  and  I  should  be  ashamed  of 
myself  at  home,  but  it 's  different  like  out  here.' 
There  are  further  points  in  which  all  cannot 
agree  with  those  who  see  in  any  and  every  system 
of  rigid  discipline  an  unqualified  blessing.  It 
seems  to  me — I  shall  be  only  too  glad  to  be 
shown  my  mistake — that  discipline  imposed 
from  without  lays,  unintentionally  of  course, 
but  no  less  surely,  an  undue  emphasis  on  appear- 
ances. A  newly  enlisted  volunteer  in  the  Army, 
with  the  ardour  of  novelty  upon  him,  tries  his 
hardest  to  keep  all  the  rules  and  abide  by  all 
the  principles  laid  down  for  his  observance.  But 
it  needs  a  very  stolid  character  to  persist  in  so 
doing.  *  The  Army  has  the  machinery  by  which 
it  can  force  me  to  obey  ;  anything  that  I  can  do 
to  evade  that  machinery  is  perfectly  legitimate. 
It  is  the  Army's  concern  to  make  a  soldier  of  me  ; 
it  is  my  concern  to  endure  the  process  with  as 
little  discomfort  to  myself  as  I  can  manage.  All 's 
fair  in  love  and  war.  I  take  my  risks  and  do  my 
best  not  to  be  found  out/  That  is  an  attitude 


DISCIPLINE— AND  AFTER  ?         69 

which  very  soon  comes,  consciously  or  not,  to 
many  men,  and  it  is  almost  inevitable.     When 
we  are  our  own  masters  and  live  by  our  own  rules 
such  an  evasion  would  be  impossible  save  to  the 
grossest  of  self-deceivers  ;  but  an  iron  discipline, 
not  of  our  own  manufacture,  cannot  demand  the 
same  inward  respect  of  us,  nor  can  our  consciences 
trouble  us  so  much  in  any  attempts  we  may  make 
to  escape  its  disabilities.     If  all  this  is  true — 
(and  it  is  only  guess-work) — it  probably  affects 
the  soldier's  military  efficiency  little  or  nothing, 
but  it  has  a  vast  influence  on  his  moral  character, 
and  with  the  latter  no  military  system  seems  to 
have  much  concern.     Take  one  obvious  example  : 
admitted  that  drunkenness  is  an  offence  against 
discipline  and  punishable  as  such  ;    all  agree. 
But  whether  it  matters  or  not  apart  from  a  man's 
physical  fitness  and  his  ability  to  discharge  his 
duties  to  all  appearance  satisfactorily — that  is  a 
question  solely  for  the  private  opinion  of  each 
officer  and  man.     Why  should  any  Army,  as  a 
system — (I  mean  apart  from  the  personal  influence 
of  its  leaders,  which  may  be  exercised  in  either 
direction) — concern   itself  with   morals  ?     It  is 
chiefly — no,  only — concerned  with  making  men 


70  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

good  fighters,  and  it  has  yet  to  be  proved  that  the 
man  who  is  at  his  best  on  the  field  of  battle  is  the 
man  of  the  highest  moral  character.  There  is 
much  evidence  to  show  that  the  hardest  fighters 
are  often  not  patterns  of  self-control  or  of  moral 
excellence.  That  is  not  their  business  ;  we  do 
not  require  it  of  them.  We  cannot  be  such 
hypocrites  as  to  pretend  even  to  ourselves  that 
we  put  any  consideration  before  the  defeat  of  the 
enemy.  We  ask  of  our  men  that  they  should  be 
patient  and  gallant  and  should  hit  hard,  and  we 
are  as  a  nation — and  quite  rightly — too  grateful 
for  their  valour  to  consider  their  religion  or  morals 
as  essential  points,  unless  we  can  trace  or  prove 
a  vital  and  convincing  connection  between  the 
two.  Such  a  connection  cannot  be  satisfactorily 
established  as  a  general  working  principle  ;  the 
Army  system  admits  it  as  a  possibility,  but  does 
not  rely  on  it  any  more  than  the  nation  does. 
As  chaplains  we  recognise  with  profoundest 
gratitude  that  our  armies  in  the  field  are  led  in 
the  higher  command  by  men  who  for  the  most 
part  value  religious  influences  and  moral  virtues 
not  only  for  their  probable  connection  with 
fighting  efficiency  but  also  for  their  own  intrinsic 


DISCIPLINE— AND  AFTER?          71 

importance.  But  where  that  view  is  held  it  can 
only  be  personal,  not  official  ;  the  Army  system 
of  discipline  gives  it  a  magnificent  channel  for 
exercising  a  widespread  influence,  but,  apart 
from  such  leaders,  the  Army  would  appear  to 
have  no  very  definite  moral  colour  at  all.  The 
fault  of  course  does  not  lie  with  the  Army,  but 
with  war  itself  ;  the  fact  of  war  forces  a  nation 
to  submit  to  artificial  restraint,  to  exalt  physical 
courage  at  the  expense  of  moral  courage,  to 
develop  and  extend  many  of  the  most  magnificent 
Christian  virtues  to  the  grave  detriment  of  many 
others. 

This  temporary  discipline  will  have  its  more 
reasoned  rebound  as  well.  These  soldiers  in 
days  to  come  will  have  their  eyes  about  them  to 
see  that  they  are  not  driven  ;  they  will  not  wish 
to  continue  after  the  war  '  under  an  authority 
different  in  form  but  every  bit  as  strict  and 
peremptory,'  unless  they  choose  it  once  more  of 
their  own  accord  and  for  some  particular  pur- 
pose. Having  once  submitted  themselves  to  the 
strictest  rules,  suppressing  all  political  and  per- 
sonal prejudice,  they  will  naturally  resent  lack 
of  discipline  in  others  who  did  not  serve  with 


72  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

them  during  these  times,  especially  when  dis- 
played in  causes  such  as  Home  Rule  or  Female 
Suffrage,  which  may  seem  to  them  to  be 
less  worthy  of  support  than  the  cause  of 
England  against  Germany.  It  may  be,  how- 
ever, that  with  grand  inconsistency  they  will 
assert  their  own  independence,  moral,  industrial, 
and  social,  and  people  will  surfer  a  rude  shock 
who  think  that  they  can  be  hectored.  We 
churchmen  and  clergy  need  most  of  all  to  take 
this  lesson  to  heart.  It  is  our  business  to  try 
and  build  up  in  the  nation  the  quality  of  self- 
discipline.  Where  we  affect  to  take  discipline 
into  our  own  hands  we  must  be,  like  the  Roman 
Church,  much  stricter  and  more  consistent. 
The  Church,  like  the  Army,  is  a  system  or 
organisation,  though  it  was  called  into  being  for 
an  infinitely  higher  purpose  than  any  human 
institution.  We  have  therefore  in  the  Church 
those  very  features  of  systematic  discipline, 
imposed  for  a  great  cause,  which  appeal  to  the 
soldier.  But  we  cannot  expect  him  to  recognise 
the  discipline  of  the  Church  unless  its  own  officers 
respect  that  discipline  more  than  in  the  past  we 
have  given  any  appearance  of  doing.  We  must 


DISCIPLINE— AND  AFTER  ?          73 

start  at  home  and  must  begin  with  ourselves. 
We  shall  do  well  to  remember  that  the  discipline 
of  the  Church,  while  strict  and  consistent,  must 
not  take  the  place  of  sense  of  responsibility,  self- 
discipline  in  the  individual  member  ;  unbending 
in  certain  definite  things,  persuasive  in  all  else  ; 
preaching  less  of  the  law  of  God  demanding 
obedience  than  the  love  of  God  claiming  recog- 
nition and  response.  If  we  would  impose  rules 
on  its  members  we  must  let  them  in  turn  have  a 
larger  and  more  rational  share  in  its  administra- 
tion. There  is  a  truly  appalling  possibility  of 
the  Church  of  the  future  being  run  on  Army  lines 
in  this  respect ;  once  let  the  soldier  suspect  this 
and  he  will  fight  shy  at  once  ;  he  may  grouse 
behind  our  backs,  but  he  will  not  help  us  reset 
our  house  in  order  ;  he  will  never  even  realise 
that  we  cannot  even  attempt  to  do  so  without  his 
criticism  and  his  help.  If  we  consider  attendance 
at  services  essential  to  individual  religion  we 
must  not  forget  that  we  are  dealing  with  men 
to  whom  mainly  Church  attendance  has  been  a 
matter  of  compulsion  from  which,  because  of  its 
association  with  the  bondage  of  Army  life,  they 
will  be  thankful  to  be  free.  That  many  of  them 


74  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

will  welcome  entire  liberty  of  action  in  their  re- 
ligious observances  in  order  to  use  it  to  come 
back  to  Church  as  free  men,  is  certain  ;  but 
services  as  held  at  the  front  form  a  very  indifferent 
training  ground  for  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer 
as  it  stands  and  is  used  at  home. 

There  is  only  one  other  influence  of  Army  life 
to  which  reference  can  be  made  in  this  paper, 
and  it  is  perhaps  the  most  important.  Social 
reformers,  politicians  of  all  persuasions,  and 
cranks  of  all  colours  foretell  with  joy  the  results 
that  will  obtain  in  the  body  politic  from  the  ming- 
ling of  the  classes  on  Active  Service.  Over  a 
certain  field  the  crop  will  come  to  harvest  as  they 
hope  ;  shopkeepers  and  miners,  ploughboys  and 
city  clerks,  bird  fanciers  and  tramps,  costers 
and  commercial  travellers  have  learned  to  know 
and  to  respect  one  another.  They  are  more 
likely  to  pull  together  in  politics,  or  at  any  rate 
to  lay  much  less  store  by  political  antagonisms 
than  in  the  past ;  it  will  be  difficult  for  any  one  to 
work  them  off  against  each  other  as  class  against 
class.  But  it  is  not  so  sure  that  the  war  has 
really  bridged  the  gulf  between  the  masses  and 
the  upper  classes — meaning  by  the  latter  phrase 


DISCIPLINE—AND  AFTER  ?         75 

the  public  school  or  University  type  of  man. 
Mutual  respect,  admiration,  affection — that  has 
all  come  wherever  it  was  lacking  before,  but 
knowledge  has  not  come  to  the  degree  that  it  was 
needed  ;  the  prospect  of  it  has  even  receded. 
The  class  barrier  here  is  stronger  than  before ; 
how  could  it  well  be  otherwise  ?  Before  the  war 
the  working-man  was  gradually  struggling  to  a 
necessary  independence  ;  only  in  out-of-the-way 
manorial  regions  did  he  touch  his  hat  '  to  the 
gentleman,'  or  the  latter  expect  such  attention 
from  him.  The  years  of  bridge-building  by 
school  and  college  settlements  had  been  pro- 
ducing in  the  last  few  years  a  larger  increase  in 
results ;  through  their  agency,  assisted  by  such 
means  as  the  Cavendish  Club  and  Association, 
the  members  of  the  so-called  '  governing  class  ' 
were  in  increasingly  large  numbers  getting  to 
know  the  working-man,  and  he  them,  as  man  to 
man. 

Has  the  war  set  all  that  back  a  generation  or 
more  ?  Is  the  Army  from  the  social  point  of  view 
inevitably  reactionary  ?  Young  men  have  gone 
in  thousands  from  their  public  school  or  Univer- 
sity to  learn  afresh  in  the  Army  that '  the  masses 


76  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

are  made  of  different  stuff  J  to  themselves.  May 
not  many  of  them  forget,  on  a  return  to  civil  life, 
that  it  was  the  uniform  and  the  badges,  since 
discarded,  which  for  disciplinary  purposes  alone 
gave  them  a  position  of  superiority  which  is  no 
longer  theirs  ?  So  long  as  there  be  wars  there 
must  be  this  discipline  and  rank,  the  outward 
marks  of  respect,  the  rigid  barriers  ;  all  this  is 
excellent  for  the  purposes  intended,  and  where 
it  is  most  carefully  observed  there  will  always  be 
found  the  flower  and  perfection  of  any  army. 
This  truth  has  been  proved  time  out  of  number 
in  this  war.  Thus,  for  wholly  admirable  reasons 
— (admirable,  that  is  to  say,  if  we  pass  over  the 
question  of  the  fact  and  necessity  of  war  itself) 
— the  young  officer  has  been  obliged  to  treat 
his  men  as  people  who  mustn't  argue  with  him 
or  contradict  him ;  who  must  say  *  Sir '  and 
salute,  may  never  become  '  familiar/  must  make 
way  for  him,  stand  at  attention  and  perform  the 
rest  of  the  very  necessary  formality  of  Army 
discipline.  Many  instances  could  be  given  of 
this  artificial  inequality,  which,  until  he  has 
hardened  himself  to  the  idea  of  it  for  practical 
purposes,  the  newly  commissioned  officer,  to 


DISCIPLINE— AND  AFTER  ?          77 

his  credit,  often  regards  with  healthy  resentment. 
But  willingly  or  unwillingly,  consciously  or  un- 
consciously, it  comes  at  last  natural  to  him  ; 
its  advantages  for  the  great  Service  of  which  he 
is  proud  to  be  a  member  are  so  obvious  that  he 
may  not  remember,  in  civilian  days  to  come, 
that  he  has  acquired  a  habit  of  mind  which  is — 
once  away  from  the  Army — unnecessary  and, 
because  no  longer  necessary,  neither  just  nor 
wise.  The  splendid  spirit  existing  between 
officers  and  men,  the  devotion  of  men  to  officers, 
the  care  of  officers  for  their  men — these  facts 
hardly  affect  the  position  I  am  trying  to  make 
clear  ;  they  do  not  constitute  knowledge.  Officers 
and  men  understand  each  other  thoroughly  ; 
know  each  other  through  and  through  as  soldiers, 
but  under  present  conditions  the  one  cannot 
get  the  real  personal  knowledge  of  the  other  as 
citizen  to  citizen.  This  ignorance  is  probably 
much  greater  on  the  man's  side  than  on  the 
officer's.  At  the  risk  of  repetition  I  would  at- 
tempt to  make  my  opinion  here  still  plainer ; 
on  joining  the  Army  the  officer  forces  himself  to 
subordinate  his  own  point  of  view — whatever  it 
may  be — about  '  the  classes  ' — to  the  Army 


78  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

requirements  of  rank  ;  he  must  from  the  very 
first  be  less  concerned  to  study  the  point  of  view 
of  his  men  as  citizens  than  to  drill  into  them  the 
official  Army  attitude  towards  them  as  soldiers ; 
and  the  two  are  entirely  different. 

There  is  one  great  hope.  In  this  war  more 
than  ever  before  in  the  English  Army  men  of  all 
classes  have  served  together  in  nearly  all  ranks. 
That  fact — so  obvious — has  already  been  men- 
tioned but  not  in  this  definite  connection.  I 
am  thinking  now  primarily  of  the  very  large 
number  of  public  school  men  who — whether 
they  have  later  on  taken  commissions  or  not— 
have  served  for  months  on  end  side  by  side  with 
the  weaver,  the  clerk,  the  tram  conductor,  the 
coal  heaver,  and  the  artisan.  The  men  who 
have  had  that  experience  should  come  out  of  the 
war  with  an  intimate  first-hand  knowledge  of  the 
minds  and  modes  of  thought,  the  prejudices  and 
their  causes,  the  misunderstandings  and  their 
justifications,  the  aims  and  ideals,  the  character 
and  philosophy  of  life  of  fellow-citizens  of  in- 
finitely different  education  and  environment  to 
their  own.  To  what  use  will  they  put  this  unique 
store  of  experience  ?  They  may  speak  with  an 


DISCIPLINE— AND  AFTER  ?         79 

authority  which  cannot  be  gainsaid.  There  is 
nothing  that  we  might  not  learn  if  they  will 
teach  us,  and  teach  us  quite  honestly  without 
prejudice  or  loss  of  memory.  Above  all,  there  is 
one  truth — if  it  be  truth  and  not  merely  the  blind 
hope  of  my  own  prejudice — that  they  must 
surely  make  known  from  their  store  of  great 
discoveries ;  and  that  is,  that  wars  in  Europe 
will  one  day  be  impossible,  because  Europe's 
working-classes  will  insist  that  it  be  so.  The  tie 
of  common  humanity,  common  brotherhood, 
common  advantage  will  be  at  last  stronger  than 
the  tie  of  any  nationality.  The  governing 
classes  will  in  this  respect  one  day  be  governed 
unless  they  too,  for  whatever  reason,  determine 
that  wars  must  cease  and  join  hand  in  hand  with 
those  they  lately  led  in  war  and  lead  them  so  in 
peace.  And  this  must  be  done  in  the  next  ten 
years  if  it  is  to  be  done  at  all — done  while  all 
men  still  dwell  on  the  horrors  of  war  and  the 
bestialities  of  war,  before  passing  time  has 
reflected  a  glow  of  sentiment  and  glamour  on  to 
it,  and  medals  and  ribbons  and  the  coloured 
reminiscences  of  forgetful  men  alone  are  left  to 
give  a  vastly  misleading  opinion  of  war  to  the 


80  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

children  of  generations  to  come.  It  must  be 
done  too  while  the  classes  still  respect  each  other 
for  what  each  has  done  for  his  country  in  the 
time  of  her  greatest  need  ;  while  no  class  can 
sling  mud  at  any  other  class  for  its  lack  of 
patriotism.  The  men  of  the  upper  classes  have 
proved  their  capacity  for  self-sacrifice.  The 
rally  of  working-men  to  the  flag  is  an  unimpeach- 
able guarantee  that  their  known  objection  to 
war  as  such,  their  reiterated  belief  that  war  can 
be  eliminated  from  the  world's  future,  does  not 
spring — as  so  often  suspected  by  others — merely 
from  a  consideration  of  their  own  purses  and 
their  own  skins.  When  peace  comes  again  they 
can  speak  freely  without  fear  that  any  man  will 
dub  them  coward  or  traitor.  Those  too  who 
have  learned  their  point  of  view,  its  eminent 
reasonableness,  its  large  humanity,  can  bring 
others  to  meet  them  half-way  in  the  great 
endeavour,  saying  '  They  have  mingled  their 
blood  with  yours  ;  they  have  done  great  service 
for  England's  name.  Join  them  in  a  common 
cause  greater  even  than  any  to  which  England 
has  yet  bidden  you.'  For  a  time  such  voices 
will  be  heard  with  respect  and  consideration  if 


DISCIPLINE— AND  AFTER  ?          81 

raised  without  delay — but  not  for  long.  In  the 
welter  of  our  peace-time  prejudice  and  party 
passion  such  claims  on  our  attention,  claims 
bought  with  sweat  and  blood,  may  so  quickly 
be  forgotten,  and  many  good  men  who  gave 
their  lives  in  a  war  to  end  war  will  then  have 
died  in  vain. 


FIFTH    PAPER 

SOMETHING   DEFINITE 

1  You  are  a  pessimist,  you  cannot  even  see  the 
humorous  side  of  the  things  of  which  you  speak. 
You  rob  of  its  due  emphasis  the  natural  good- 
ness of  mankind.  Your  omissions  are  glaring. 
You  propound  problems  with  but  the  barest 
hint  of  a  solution.  It 's  all  very  well  in  its  way, 
but  isn't  it  all  unnecessarily  grim  ?  ' 

That  is  a  fair  composite  summary  of  the 
criticisms  of  some  who  have  heard  the  fore- 
going opinions  expressed  or  have  glanced  through 
these  papers.  I  would  attempt  to  answer  them 
here. 

The  natural  goodness,  and  the  evidence  of 
'  natural  religion/  as  displayed  in  the  lives  of 
our  soldiers,  receives  its  proper  emphasis  in  the 
papers  written  by  Mr.  Gordon  in  this  book.  I 
am  in  almost  entire  agreement  with  a  great  deal, 
though  not  all,  that  he  says  on  that  and  other 


SOMETHING  DEFINITE  83 

subjects  ;  we  are  not  concerned  to  repeat  each 
other  ;  we  have,  save  for  occasional  overlapping, 
confined  ourselves  as  far  as  possible  each  to  his 
own  chosen  line,  nor  have  we  separately  or 
together  attempted  to  cover  all  the  ground. 
We  have  not,  for  instance,  tried  to  deal  directly 
with  the  effect  on  our  Army  of  a  closer  acquaint- 
ance with  religious  observances  on  the  con- 
tinent and  with  the  habits  and  national  character 
of  our  great  and  gallant  Ally. 

As  to  humour,  life  at  the  front,  as  anywhere 
where  Englishmen  collect,  is  full  of  it,  conscious 
or  unconscious.  The  nation  has  quite  rightly 
made  the  most  of  it  during  the  past  two  years. 
The  Press,  comic  or  would-be-serious,  and  the 
revue  writers  have  sometimes  made  more  of  it 
than  occasion  demanded  or  good  taste  should 
have  allowed ;  but  if  mistakes  have  been  made, 
perhaps  they  have  been  made  on  the  right  side. 
True  it  is  that  laughter  ripples  through  France 
and  Flanders,  laughter  in  which  even  the  writer 
of  these  '  dolorous  pages  '  has  been  known  to 
join.  For  the  purpose,  however,  which  I  had  in 
attempting  to  express  myself  in  this  book  I  am 
well  content  to  plead  guilty  to  the  charge  of 


84  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

presenting  war  and  its  aftermath  as  vastly 
humourless  subjects.  Long  may  they  be  con- 
sidered so  ! 

The  omissions  are,  I  am  afraid,  very  glaring. 
So  little  has  been  said  about  the  dominant  note 
of  Army  life  at  the  front,  its  good  comradeship, 
the  gospel  of  '  standing  in  with  your  mates,'  of 
'  never  letting  down  a  pal '  ;  or  the  same  thing 
as  seen  amongst  officers — the  hospitality,  the 
open  friendliness,  the  free  brotherhood  of  arms, 
so  conspicuously  noticeable  for  instance  in  the 
officers  of  the  Royal  Regiment  of  Artillery. 
Again,  there  has  been  no  attempt  to  make  any 
definite  distinction  between  the  old  regular 
private  soldier  (the  '  working-class  '  man)  on  the 
one  hand,  and  on  the  other  the  more  educated 
citizen  who  has  served  by  the  thousand  in  the 
ranks.  The  two  classes  do  not  really  admit  of 
separate  treatment  within  the  scope  of  this 
book  ;  distinctions  have  been  pointed  out  where 
it  has  seemed  necessary,  but  there  is  a  much 
larger  common  element  than  is  generally  supposed 
in  which  the  two  are  merged.  Nor  has  any 
allusion  been  made  to  the  mental  effects  of 
wounds — the  mark  left  on  the  wounded  by 


SOMETHING  DEFINITE  85 

weeks  of  suffering  and  by  the  opportunity  for 
interminable  reflection  ;  let  those  who  know 
speak  of  the  effect  of  these  things  on  mind  and 
spirit. 

It  is  sufficient  to  admit  these  and  other  omis- 
sions in  passing,  but  the  failure  to  suggest  solu- 
tions to  difficulties  raised — raised,  it  may  seem 
to  some,  quite  unnecessarily — is  a  more  serious 
matter.  '  It  is  all  very  well  to  make  criticisms, 
but  any  child  can  point  out  difficulties.  What 
we  want  to  find  is  a  way  out/  I  would  answer 
that  in  the  present  case  possible  problems  have 
not  been  presented  in  any  capricious  mood  ; 
any  one  may  be  justified  in  attempting  to  attract 
attention  to  certain  facts  and  considerations  of 
importance  which  in  his  opinion  might  otherwise 
escape  notice,  while  leaving  it  to  more  competent 
people  to  deal  with  the  situation  when  it  arises. 
Nor  is  it  pessimistic  to  have  a  ready  eye  for 
obstacles,  provided  there  is  an  inward  conviction 
that  such  obstacles  can  be  surmounted.  But 
recognising  a  certain  element  of  justice  in  such 
criticisms,  I  am  proposing  in  this  paper  to  present 
certain  possibilities  in  the  form  of  an  appeal. 
Certain  ways  of  facing  those  dangerous  contin- 


86  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

gencies  may  here  be  indicated  with  considerable 
hesitation  ;  they  are  possibly  all  wrong ;  if  so, 
their  faulty  construction,  their  lack  of  insight 
and  wisdom  constitute  the  appeal  to  others  to 
provide  something  more  practical  and  offering 
a  better  hope  of  ultimate  satisfaction. 

It  has  been  implied  in  these  papers  that  a  re- 
action may  be  expected  towards  intemperance 
and  immorality  when  the  army  is  disbanded. 
The  former  of  these  might  well  be  expected  quite 
apart  from  any  connection  with  reaction  ;  men 
who  have  for  months  been  accustomed  to  swill 
French  beer  in  unlimited  amounts  will  attempt 
the  same  performance  on  English  ale  with  truly 
surprising  results.  Virtue  enforced  by  legisla- 
tion may  appeal  to  some,  though  it  is  not  desir- 
able from  most  people's  point  of  view  ;  but  all 
the  same  the  absolute  extinction  of  bad  spirits, 
and  of  beer  of  over  a  certain  percentage  of  alcohol, 
would  be  surely  a  legitimate  protection  of  a  man 
from  himself.  I  know  that  '  good  old  English 
beer '  is  supposed  to  be  the  sturdy  bulwark  of 
the  English  national  character,  but  it  has  not  been 
shown  in  the  present  war  that  the  French  or 
German  national  character  is  less  sturdy  without 


SOMETHING  DEFINITE  87 

it ;  it  has  yet  to  be  proved  that  a  future  genera- 
tion of  Englishmen,  who  never  having  tasted 
would  not  miss  it,  would  be  lacking  in  either 
sturdiness  or  contentment  through  its  absence. 
1  We  can't  do  without  our  old  English  beer/  Is 
that  going  to  be  the  cry  from  men  who  were  pre- 
pared a  few  months  before  to  sacrifice  not  only 
comfort  and,  if  need  be,  life — but  even  beer  itself  ? 
That  suggestion  is  a  matter  for  action,  if  any 
one  be  found  to  advance  its  cause.  There  is  a 
further  suggestion  on  a  matter  of  attitude  for 
each  individual  citizen  to  consider.  The  attitude 
suggested  is  merely  one  of  common  sense ; 
whether  the  no-treating  order  continue  for  a 
time  or  not  he  might  remember  that  the  per- 
petual '  Have  a  drink  ? '  is  a  merely  conven- 
tional and  largely  selfish  method  of  displaying 
gratitude  and  offering  a  welcome  home.  It  is 
selfish  because  ninety-nine  out  of  every  hundred 
men  who  stand  another  man  a  drink  do  so  be- 
cause of  the  opportunity  thereby  presented  of 
having  a  drink  themselves.  It  is  also  largely  a 
matter  of  convention  which  seems  to  require 
that  the  grateful  recipient  should  return  the 
favour  within  ten  minutes  ;  and  so  the  farce 


88  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

runs  on,  the  only  time-limit  set  to  it  being  an 
engagement  to  be  kept  by  either  party  or  a  meal 
to  be  eaten  by  both.  Thus  early  in  life  many  a 
young  man  reaches  a  state  of  permanent  disten- 
tion,  a  stage  in  which  the  liquid  refreshment, 
once  taken  in  flabby  obedience  to  a  convention, 
becomes  a  permanent  necessity  with  bodily 
space  thus  artificially  created  for  its  accommoda- 
tion. Even  where  the  generous  distribution  of 
drinks  is  not  half-selfishly  inspired  it  is  almost 
equally  grotesque  ;  it  is  appalling  to  contem- 
plate the  lives  that  have  been  twisted  out  of  the 
straight  and  the  homes  rendered  unhappy  through 
the  agency  in  the  first  place  of  the  kind  fool  with 
his  everlasting  iteration  of  '  What  '11  you  have  ?  ' 
Why  is  it  that  the  average  Englishman's  main 
idea  of  friendliness  and  good  fellowship  should 
consist  chiefly  in  the  proffer  of  liquid  refresh- 
ment with  an  insistence  that  it  must  be  alcoholic  ? 
This  insistence,  largely  conventional,  is  just  as 
unreasonably  silly  and  narrow  in  one  direction 
as  for  instance  is,  in  the  other  direction,  the 
anxiety  of  a  fanatic  temperance  advocate  to 
enforce  sobriety  by  abolishing  port  wine  ! 

So  too  with  sexual  immorality — we  may  be 


SOMETHING  DEFINITE  89 

prepared  for  an  orgy  of  unrestrained  promis- 
cuity. Pent-up  forces  will  be  loosed ;  money 
for  a  time  will  be  abundant  and  women  will  be 
complacent.  The  risk  of  contracting  syphilis 
is  not  likely  under  the  circumstances  to  be  a 
sufficient  deterrent ;  gonorrhoea  is  a  minor  dis- 
comfort compared  to  wounds  or  death  cheerfully 
faced  in  battle,  and  is  much  more  pleasurably 
obtained.1  Education  is  the  cry  to  remedy 
everything,  but  it  is  confined  in  this  matter  too 
exclusively  to  the  removal  of  ignorance  on  the 
physical  side  alone.  By  all  means  let  our  boys 
and  girls,  in  or  out  of  school,  be  taught  the 
mysteries  of  body  and  birth  ;  but  also  let  every 
boy  and  man  be  drilled  into  a  knowledge  of 
certain  other  truths — that  no  woman  can  become 
a  prostitute  at  all  save  through  the  action  origi- 
nally of  some  one  individual  man  through  whom 
she  first  ceases  to  be  an  •  honest  woman  '  ;  that 
economic  pressure  has  infinitely  more  to  do  with 
prostitution  than  has  feminine  passion  ;  that  the 
whole  question  of  social  inequality  takes  on  a 

1  The  much  questioned  connection  between  alcoholic  in- 
dulgence and  venereal  diseases  is  firmly  established  in  the 
Report  of  the  Royal  Commission  on  the  latter  subject,  page  65, 
paragraph  235. 


90  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

fresh  colour  when  the  man  who  has  money  or 
some  money  buys  the  woman  who  would  other- 
wise have  little  or  no  money,  and  then  makes  her 
dependence  on  her  miserable  trade  his  justifica- 
tion for  giving  her  his  custom.  Such  action  is 
the  result  of  blind  or  wilful  ignorance  ;  ignorance 
should  never  be  advanced  as  an  excuse  for  this  by 
any  intelligent  man,  and  anyhow  it  is  almost 
inexcusable  wherever  the  man  draws  his  live- 
lihood and  his  spare  cash  from  any  trade  or 
business  concern  connected,  however  indirectly, 
with  the  gross  underpayment  of  women  workers. 
There  are  many  other  things  that  need  to  be 
taught,  but  principally  that  the  risks  a  man  runs 
in  sinning  are  risks  in  which  the  happiness  of 
others,  living  and  yet  unborn,  is  intimately  and 
unavoidably  entangled.  Yet  all  this  and  much 
more,  about  which  there  is  a  simply  stupefying 
ignorance  or  indifference  amongst  eighty  out  of 
every  hundred  men  of  all  classes,  may  not  be 
always  sufficient  to  restrain  a  man  of  strong 
passions  and  to  make  our  country  what  it 
should  be.  The  one  thing  needed  as  well  is  an 
understanding  of  the  spiritual  war  between  evil 
and  good  which  is  more  permanent  and  im- 


SOMETHING  DEFINITE  91 

portant  than  any  worldly  campaign,  and  a  belief 
in  the  power  that  Christ  gives  to  those  who  are 
willing  to  stand  by  His  side. 

On  the  purely  material  or  physical  side  of  the 
question  the  work  of  the  Royal  Commission  on 
Venereal  Diseases  is  a  long  step  in  the  right 
direction.  In  this  connection  I  have  leave  to 
mention  a  suggestion  made  by  a  friend  of  mine.1 
I  quote  it  more  or  less  as  he  made  it  to  me, 
slightly  extended,  but  without  comment.  It  is 
'  that  the  Church  of  England  should  take  the 
lead  by  refusing  to  "  solemnize "  syphilitic 
marriages ;  that  this  is  no  real  hardship  or  in- 
justice on  any  man ;  that  a  man  who  rates  God's 
blessing  through  the  Church  on  his  married  life 
sufficiently  high  will  consider  it  well  worth  the 
inconvenience  of  troubling  to  obtain  a  doctor's 
certificate  for  a  clean  bill  of  health  ;  that  even 
if  he  is  not  pronounced  fit  he  can  avail  himself 
of  the  means  provided  to  effect  a  cure — a  step 
which  otherwise  a  false  and  selfish  modesty 
might  have  prevented  him  from  taking  ;  that 
there  can  be  no  blessing  of  God  on  a  tainted 
union,  for,  whether  or  not  either  of  the  parties 

1  The  Rev.  Harry  Blackburne. 


92  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

are  guiltily  responsible  for  the  taint,  it  is  one 
that  may  affect  the  children  yet  unborn,  and 
therefore  the  marriage  at  that  time  is  not  such  as 
to  win  God's  approval  ;  that  the  Church  in  so 
insisting  would  be  taking  a  perfectly  reasonable 
and  legitimate  course  in  removing  the  mockery 
of  many  *  Christian  marriages '  of  to-day  :  that 
a  marriage  in  Church  is  meant  to  be  and  should 
be  a  sincere  act  of  Prayer — by  people  who  believe 
in  God — for  His  Blessing  on  them  at  the  time  of 
the  most  important  change  of  their  whole  lives  ; 
that  people  to  whom  these  conditions  for  any 
reason  do  not  apply  should  only  be  thankful 
that  the  Church  at  last  does  not  allow  them  to 
make  humbugs  of  themselves,  even  for  an  hour, 
nor  a  mockery  of  a  religion  in  which  they  do  not 
believe  ;  and  that  they  should  seek  legal  union 
elsewhere  ;  finally,  that  it  is  no  wild  prophecy 
to  say  that  eventually  the  State  will  insist  on  a 
clean  bill  of  health  in  those  who  propose  to  beget 
children,  and  that  those  who  love  their  Church 
would  like  to  see  her  take  the  lead  in  this  instead 
of  being  compelled,  years  hence  and  faintly 
approving,  to  adopt  a  Christian  principle  from  a 
secular  authority  for  purely  material  reasons.' 


SOMETHING  DEFINITE  93 

To  return  to  our  main  subject — the  whole 
question,  so  vitally  important  to  the  nation's 
and  the  world's  future,  as  to  what  will  happen 
the  year  after  the  war.  The  method  by  which 
the  discharged  soldier  is  '  paid  out '  will  have  no 
small  bearing.  Is  the  accumulated  surplus  of 
his  pay  to  be  flung  into  his  hand  while  he  is 
reeling  with  the  excitement  of  a  renewed  and 
unaccustomed  freedom,  to  be  spent  perhaps 
before  he  has  even  reached  the  door  of  his  own 
home,  or  at  any  rate  before  he  has  steadied  down 
to  the  realisation  that  he  will  need  all  his  savings 
for  himself  and  family  in  the  years  that  lie 
ahead  ? 

The  requirements  of  the  whole  situation  seem 
then  to  be  chiefly  an  application  of  practical 
common  sense  to  the  treatment  of  our  soldiers  on 
their  return,  and  any  campaign  of  common  sense 
to  be  successful  must  be  led  by  the  women  ; 
they  must  not  underrate  nor  allow  to  be  under- 
rated their  enormous  influence ;  they  must 
remember  that  the  re-dominance  of  man  over 
woman  which  war  so  often  brings  in  its  train  is 
due  less  to  the  conceit  or  self-assertion  of  the 
fighting  man  than  to  woman's  unnecessary  self- 


94  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

depreciation  and  to  her  faculty  for  hero-worship. 
Our  women  must  above  all  keep  their  heads  and 
help  the  men  to  keep  theirs.  They  cannot  com- 
plain of  our  lack  of  chivalry  towards  them  in 
some  respects  if  they  ever  lower  their  woman- 
hood in  any  way  so  that  it  cannot  command  our 
reverence.  However  he  may  appear  to  treat  her, 
man  idealises  woman  ;  if  she  allows  herself  to 
lose  his  respect,  if  she  robs  him  of  his  ideal  she 
is  doing  herself  and  him  the  greatest  disservice. 
Above  all,  through  the  first  months  of  riot  and 
reaction  those  who  love  Christ  had  better  see  to 
it  that  they  have  a  Church  on  her  knees.  And 
when  things  settle  down  again,  what  then  ?  The 
orgy  will  not  last.  The  Churches  will  then  have 
their  opportunity.  Men  will  be  once  more 
gaining  their  poise  ;  regret  will  come  for  any 
selfish  plunge  into  dissipation.  '  Was  it  worth 
it '  ?  Many  will  be  asking  themselves,  as  they 
look  back  to  the  struggle  in  which  they  lately 
took  part.  '  Did  we  offer  our  best,  did  we  bury 
our  friends  by  the  score,  did  we  take  human 
lives  beyond  count  simply  for  this  ?  Is  there 
not  happiness  to  be  found  as  well  as  pain  and 
pleasure  ?  Is  there  no  purpose  in  life  after  all  ? 


SOMETHING  DEFINITE  95 

Is  all  waste  ?  '  The  religion  of  Christ  alone  has 
a  satisfying  answer  to  such  questions,  and  the 
Churches  have  certain  foundations  upon  which 
to  rest  in  offering  a  solution.  I  am  not  thinking 
of  the  foundations  existing  in  the  character,  in 
the  natural  goodness  of  men  themselves:  the 
subject  of  those  foundations  and  how  to  build 
upon  them  is  dealt  with  in  another  part  of  this 
book.  Rather  I  am  referring  to  that  spirit  of 
comradeship  and  brotherhood  which  has  been 
developed  by  service  in  the  Army.  No  appeal 
to  that  spirit  will  ever  be  made  quite  in  vain. 
The  rebound  from  the  thraldom  of  '  the  Services  ' 
will  not  be  permanent.  The  reaction  from  hard- 
ship and  suffering  will  not  for  ever  turn  to  mere 
amusement  and  self-interest.  The  call,  stifled  in 
men's  hearts  for  a  time  perhaps,  will  break  forth 
again.  They  have  learnt  what  Service  and 
Brotherhood  mean  ;  they  will  chiefly  need  to 
be  shown  in  what  direction  and  with  what  pur- 
pose those  lessons  can  be  applied.  Hitherto 
they  were  applied  to  Defend,  but,  in  Defending, 
to  waste  and  to  destroy :  '  Show  us  instead  how 
to  create  and  to  build  up.  What  can  I  do  now 
that  others  may  not  suffer  in  that  way  in  the 


96  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

world  again,  that  the  flow  of  blood  that  has  been 
shed  may  not  be  waste  ?  Do  all  these  other 
things  you  talk  about — commercial  morality, 
industrial  justice,  religious  reunion,  personal 
purity — really  make  a  difference  ?  How  is  it 
that  war  is  in  truth  a  harvest  of  the  world's 
greed,  injustice,  or  deceit  ?  If  my  personal, 
individual  life  as  a  private  citizen  contributes 
towards  it  one  way  or  the  other,  show  me  what 
to  do  or  what  not  to  do.  I  am  ready  to  try.' 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  hoped-for 
revival  of  Christianity  will  come  through  some 
such  appeal  as  that  to  its  possibilities.  There 
will  be  one  preliminary  objection  to  be  overcome 
in  their  minds,  and  that  is  that  Christianity  has 
been  tried  already  and  found  wanting  ;  this  must 
be  strenuously  denied  ;  the  charge  must  be 
answered  before  it  is  made.  Unspoken,  not 
consciously  thought  out,  that  suspicion  is  work- 
ing silently  in  the  minds  of  thousands,  and  it  is 
a  lie.  In  the  modern  world  the  principles  of 
Jesus  Christ  are  simply  untried  in  the  daily  lives 
of  the  majority  of  us  ;  and  this  largely  for  two 
reasons,  reasons  which  are  stumbling-blocks  to 
many  who  would  otherwise  here  and  now  give 


SOMETHING  DEFINITE  97 

Christianity  a  trial.  It  is  supposed  that  to 
become  a  Christian  means  to  say  '  Good-bye  ' 
to  joy  and  vivaciousness  and  to  become  incur- 
ably dull.  Dullness — that  most  unforgiveable  of 
social  failures — is  attached  as  a  stigma  to  the 
name  of  Christian.  Whether  or  not  the  accusa- 
tion is  justifiable  we  do  not  need  to  incur  it.  The 
Christian  course  is  a  great  adventure  from  start 
to  finish  ;  it  demands  the  best  of  wits  and  heart 
and  humour  that  man  or  woman  has  to  give.  It 
should  inspire  the  ordinary  work  and  amuse- 
ments of  everyday  life  with  a  joy  that  nothing 
else  can  bring.  So  many  shrink  from  starting 
out  on  it  because  they  think  they  are  happy  now, 
and  think  that  they  will  court  unhappiness  if—- 
if what  ? — if  they  ask  Christ  to  take  possession 
of  them  !  Rather  that  joy  springs  partly,  though 
not  entirely,  from  the  conviction  that  if  one  is  for 
Christ  one  is,  in  spite  of  all  outward  appearances 
to  the  contrary,  upon  the  winning  side.  This 
is  the  other  difficulty  of  those  who  have  not  yet 
made  trial  ;  it  is  not  only  that  we  are  often  un- 
satisfactory advertisements  for  the  ideals  we 
profess,  but  that  those  ideals  seem  to  the  common 
run  of  men  to  be  in  any  case  impossible  of 

G 


98  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

achievement.  The  man  who  would  not  retire 
in  battle  without  orders  to  do  so  even  if  he 
thought — which  he  never  would  allow  himself  for 
one  moment  to  think — that  he  was  fighting  for  a 
beaten  country,  or  that  reinforcements  would 
never  come  up,  that  is  surely  not  the  man 
who  will  reject  a  trial  of  an  even  greater  cause 
solely  on  the  ground  that  it  represents  an  im- 
possible ideal  ?  The  aims  for  which  we  stand 
are  practical  aims  ;  we  are  not  bound  to  explain 
to  the  last  detail  how  exactly  in  politics  or  the 
social  order  they  will  come  to  be  realised.  Evils 
disappear  from  the  world  only  when  a  sufficient 
number  of  individual  people  are  passionately 
convinced  that  they  must  remain  no  more  ; 
then  a  way  is  found.  That  is  why  each  separate 
man  or  woman  who  will  believe  in  the  possibility 
of  these  aims  and  work  for  them  is  an  addition 
of  priceless  importance  towards  the  achievement 
of  the  end.  The  present  attitude  towards  what 
we  represent  has  been  expressed  to  me  often  out 
here  and  is  held,  I  am  sure,  widely  amongst 
officers  and  men  :  '  All  that  you  say  about  all 
these  things  is,  of  course,  perfectly  right  in  its 
way,  Padre,  and  we  expect  you  to  live  for  these 


SOMETHING  DEFINITE  99 

ideals  and  respect  you  when  you  do.  After  all 
that 's  your  job,  your  profession.  And  I  think 
there  are  lots  of  people  made  like  that.  But  I  'm 
different ;  after  all  there  's  a  lot  in  human  nature, 
isn't  there  ?  Yet  I  'd  try  to  do  what  you  say 
myself,  only  you  see  I  'm  only  one  and  that 
would  make  no  difference/  Or  again,  from 
older  men  :  '  You  may  take  it  from  me,  speak- 
ing as  a  man  of  the  world,  you  are  out  after 
impossibilities.  The  world  will  never  become 
as  you  wish  it  to  become.  War,  immorality, 
greed — human  nature  !  You  can't  change  it. 
When  I  was  quite  a  young  man  I  used  to  have 

my  ideals.     When  you  get  to  my  age ' 

There  are  three  answers : 

(1)  '  Your  view  of  human  nature  is,  though 
unconsciously  so,  an  insult  to  mankind.     Seeing 
the  evil  it  ignores  any  possibility  of  there  being 
a  divine  nature  in  man  as  well.     You  ought  to 
know  that  you  are  wrong.     You  have  proved  it 
in  your  own  life/ 

(2)  '  The  world's  history  is  a  long  chain  of 
fulfilled    ideals — moral,    social,    scientific.     One 
century's  impossibility  has  been  the  next  age's 
achievement.     So  it  will  be  again/ 


ioo          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

(3)  '  The  only  things  worth  anything  that 
endure  in  the  world  were  started  or  urged  or 
attempted  by  men  or  women  who  were  aiming 
at  an  ideal  pronounced  to  be  impossible  by  those 
around  them.  They  may  not  have  reached  it, 
but  they  got  further  than  they  ever  could  have 
risen  if  they  had  taken  any  lower  aim. 

Meanwhile  the  present  war  must  be  fought 
and  won.  Nothing  that  is  written  in  these  pages 
is  intended  to  divert  any  energies  from  the 
immediate  objective.  Yet  some  have  time  to 
prepare  for  the  ultimate  goal,  and  all  have  time 
to  think  about  it. 

1  Hullo,  Padre,  writing  that  beastly  old  book 
of  yours  ?  Come  and  .  .  .' 


SIXTH    PAPER 

POSTSCRIPT:    AN   EPITOME  OF  WAR 

THE  boy  who  was  to  die  at  five  in  the  morning 
lay  asleep  on  the  floor.  He  had  been  convicted 
of  desertion  deliberate  and  flagrant.  Every  con- 
sideration had  been  given  by  the  court  which 
tried  him  and  by  the  higher  authority  which 
confirmed  his  sentence  to  the  defence  which 
had  been  put  up  ;  to  his  youth — he  was  only 
nineteen — and  to  any  other  factor  which  might 
weigh  in  the  balance  against  the  execution  of  the 
extreme  penalty.  That  absolute  fairness  which 
is  gloriously  characteristic  of  the  Army  in  dealing 
with  such  a  case  had  been  exercised  towards  him, 
and  had  decided  against  him,  for  t  no  man  liveth 
to  himself.'  His  example,  if  followed — the 
failure  of  an  Army  always  to  fight  hard  and  never 
to  look  back — this  would  mean  in  the  end  more 
suffering  and  bloodshed  than  need  be  before 

victory  were  won.     So  he  must  suffer,  and  in  a 

101 


102          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

sense  lose  his  life  for  other  men,  since  '  no  man ' 
— not  even  a  deserter—'  dieth  to  himself.' 

For  the  last  time  he  has  faced  his  battalion  on 
parade  the  afternoon  before  with  a  moral  courage, 
untouched  by  bravado,  which  must  for  ever 
free  his  memory  of  the  charge  of  cowardice. 
Then  the  men  of  his  old  regiment,  bearing  the 
old  regimental  badge,  are  marched  straight  off 
to  their  spell  in  the  trenches  ;  he  alone  badgeless 
and  degraded  is  turned  away  to  his  last  billet  in 
France. 

And  now  on  the  floor  of  an  estaminet  back 
room  he  sleeps.  He  has  willed  away  his  dirty 
old  purse  and  his  ring,  he  has  dictated  his  last 
letter  and  sent  his  last  message.  '  What 's  the 
time  now,  sir  ? '  '  How 's  the  time  going,  sir  ? ' 
So  every  half- hour  or  less  until  3  A.M.  when  sleep 
overtakes  him.  The  guard  shuffle  about  wearily 
next  door,  and  a  faint  light  creeps  slowly  into  the 
room. 

He  has  to  all  intents  and  purposes  already 
passed  over,  and  we  commit  him  now  into  the 
hands  of  the  Faithful  Creator  and  most  Merciful 
Saviour.  He  will  be  roused  at  the  last  possible 
moment  and,  ten  minutes  later,  before  he  is  fully 


POSTSCRIPT  :  AN  EPITOME  OF  WAR   103 

awake  to  the  world,  he  will  have  left  it  for  good 
and  all.  For  others  into  those  minutes  may  be 
crowded  a  lifetime  of  anxiety  and  pain  ;  for  him 
— darkness  and  some  confusion  imperfectly  ap- 
prehended, and  then  unexpectedly  and  instan- 
taneously the  end. 

'  We  give  Thee  hearty  thanks  that  it  hath 
pleased  Thee  to  deliver  this  our  brother  out  of 
the  miseries  of  this  sinful  world.' 

Finally  beyond  the  reach  of  it — thanks  indeed. 

In  a  world  of  war  such  things  must  be.  Given 
war  conditions,  conditions  which  every  soldier 
understands,  this  is  human  justice.  Nor  is  it — 
(comparatively  speaking  only) — waste.  There  is 
no  doubt  that  the  possibility  of  the  death  penalty, 
and  the  example  of  its  actual  fulfilment  have 
saved  more  human  lives  than  those  that  have 
been  so  destroyed.  This  is  fully  understood  by 
the  man  himself  ;  he  has  no  sense  of  injustice. 
He  realises  sometimes  the  way  in  which  he  can 
make  atonement  in  a  double  sense — voluntary 
and  involuntary  ;  voluntary  in  that  the  fortitude 
and  manliness  he  has  the  chance  of  displaying  in 


104  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

his  last  twelve  hours  will  more  than  balance  the 
hesitation,  the  lack  of  fibre  or  nerve,  the  selfish 
love  of  his  own  amusement,  convenience,  or 
safety  which  have  helped  to  place  him  where 
he  is. 

And  in  a  sense  he  can,  perhaps,  be  brought  to 
understand  that,  though  he  has  not  chosen  his 
end,  he  can,  by  an  act  of  will,  accept  his  fate  as 
the  sacrifice  of  his  own  life  for  the  lives  of  other 
men.  He  can  go  out  satisfied  that  what  little 
he  has  still  to  give  is  still  worth  the  giving.  Even 
he  is  dying  for  his  country.  Even  at  the  very  end 
he  may  live  and  die  for  an  Ideal. 


PART    II 

BY 

GEOFFREY    GORDON 


FOREWORD  TO  PART  II 

IN  the  papers  that  follow  I  am  conscious  of  a  dis- 
tinct debt  to  the  'Student  in  Arms,'  which  I  am 
anxious  at  once  to  acknowledge.  In  the  subject  of 
the  '  Dilemma,'  with  which  Paper  vn.  is  concerned, 
I  was  in  correspondence  with  him  as  long  ago  as 
last  April,  and  his  letter  to  me  on  this  subject  has, 
since  his  death,  been  published  in  the  Spectator  of 
December  2nd.  Some  of  the  essays  which  he  wrote 
in  the  early  part  of  1916  had  impressed  me  so 
strongly  that,  when  I  was  at  work  on  these  papers, 
I  deliberately  refrained  from  reading  him  any 
further,  lest  I  should  become  unwillingly  guilty  of 
plagiarisation. 

Since  despatching  my  own  papers  to  the  printers, 
I  have  read  and  re-read  the  volume  of  his  collected 
essays,  and  I  can  only  say  that,  recognising  my  own 
debt  to  him,  I  should  be  more  than  proud  if  these 
papers  should  be  judged  as  in  any  way  reflecting 
the  same  spirit.  G.  G. 

January  1917. 


SEVENTH    PAPER 

THE  CHAPLAIN'S  DILEMMA 

SOMEWHERE  in  England  :  A  young  curate  is 
passing  down  a  mean  street  of  the  town.  Two 
children  are  playing  in  the  gutter :  one  is  a  mere 
babe,  one  is  old  enough  to  come  to  Sunday 
School.  As  he  passes,  the  curate  overhears  their 
conversation.  '  D'  you  know  'oo  that  is  ?  ' 
says  the  elder  to  the  younger.  '  I  knows  'im ; 
that 's  Mr.  Gawd,  that  is.'  Mr.  God — a  burden- 
some title,  and  a  heavy  responsibility,  but  at  the 
same  time  it  is  a  real  encouragement  to  the  young 
curate  to  know  that  there  are  some  people  to 
whom  he  is  indeed  the  representative  of  God. 

Somewhere  in  France  :  The  chaplain  is  walk- 
ing down  the  narrow  streets  of  a  town  which  for 
many  months  has  been  one  of  the  bases  for  the 
British  Army.  A  crowd  of  children  of  all  ages 
leave  their  play  and  run  to  him  as  he  comes. 
1  M.  Cinema,  M.  Cinema  ! '  *  Cinema  ce  soir  ? ' 

107 


io8  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

4  Laissez-moi  venir.'  '  Non,  M.  Cinema,  pas  lui — 
mais  moi,  moi — c'est  ma  mere  qui  fait  votre 
linge.'  '  Au  revoir,  M.  Cinema.'  *  A  ce  soir, 
M.  Charlie  Chaplin/ 

Mr.  God  or  M.  Cinema — for  which  does  the 
chaplain  stand  ?  Does  the  soldier  think  of  his 
Padre  in  the  main  as  the  representative  of  God, 
or  chiefly  as  the  provider  of  canteens,  cinemas, 
and  creature  comforts  ? 

When  a  battalion  is  constantly  in  action  and 
engaged  in  fierce  fighting  such  as  has  taken  place 
in  the  long  battle  of  the  Somme,  the  chaplain  is 
busy  enough  with  the  wounded,  with  funerals, 
and  with  letters  to  the  anxious  and  bereaved  at 
home  ;  but  when  once  his  unit  is  settled  down, 
whether  they  are  at  a  base  or  in  some  quiet  sector 
of  the  trenches,  he  is  faced  with  a  very  real 
dilemma.  Either  he  will  elect  to  stand  strongly, 
definitely,  and  exclusively  for  spiritual  things,  in 
which  case  he  will  have  to  be  content  to  come  in 
contact  with  only  a  very  few  men  ;  or,  in  order  to 
get  to  know  the  battalion  as  a  whole,  he  will  have 
to  throw  himself  into  a  number  of  minor  activi- 
ties, and  run  the  risk  of  getting  but  rarely  on  to 
a  higher  spiritual  level.  The  Roman  Catholic 


THE  CHAPLAIN'S  DILEMMA       109 

chaplains  have  chosen  definitely  the  former  al- 
ternative ;  they  are  frankly  sectarian,  and  have 
dealt  with  their  own  particular  flock  alone.  In 
peace-time  warfare,  as  we  who  have  been  in 
Picardy  describe  rest  billets  or  ordinary  trenches, 
they  refuse  steadily  to  have  anything  to  do  with 
canteens  and  the  like  ;  and  even  during  a  battle 
you  see  the  results  of  their  deliberate  choice,  for 
they  always  try  to  deal  with  their  flock  almost 
exclusively  on  spiritual  levels.  The  methods  of 
Anglican  chaplains,  of  course,  vary  widely. 
There  is  less  uniformity  among  us  than  among 
Roman  Catholics  here,  as  at  home.  But  for  the 
most  part,  we  have  chosen  the  other  alternative. 
Many  of  us  have  become  more  or  less  expert  in 
the  business  of  canteens,  we  organise  concerts 
and  arrange  cinema  shows.  At  dressing  stations 
we  are  busy  with  water  and  with  blankets  or 
helping  with  the  stretchers,  and  we  seize  what 
opportunities  we  can  of  doing  our  more  definitely 
pastoral  work. 

To  the  casual  reader  it  will  seem  almost  the 
obvious  thing  that  the  chaplain  should  give 
what  help  he  can  for  the  men's  comfort  and 
pleasure,  and  especially  that  he  should  minister 


i  io          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

to  the  needs  of  wounded  men  who  are  primarily 
conscious  of  being  thirsty  and  tired.  For  my 
own  part,  I  agree  with  that  view,  and  not  only 
have  I  run  canteens,  but  at  advanced  dressing 
stations  I  have  been  content  for  hours  together 
to  busy  myself  with  blankets  and  hot  soup  for 
their  needs,  happy  if  just  once  or  twice  in  a  night 
I  could  put  in  a  word  of  more  articulate  religion  ; 
but  in  fairness  I  would  say  that  there  is  a  strong 
case  to  be  made  for  the  more  specialist  plan. 
The  argument,  as  I  have  heard  it  put,  is  much  as 
follows  :  *  Nearly  all  our  men  are  apt  to  think 
much  more  of  their  bodily  needs  than  of  the 
requirements  of  the  spirit.  This  is  intensified 
when  a  wound  has  made  the  bodily  needs  more 
than  ever  insistent.  We  chaplains  are  here  to 
remind  men  constantly  of  the  spiritual  side  of 
their  nature.  Moreover,  at  such  places  there  are 
plenty  of  doctors  and  orderlies  to  deal  with  the 
wants  of  the  body.  The  real  justification  for 
our  presence,  as  chaplains,  is  not  that  we  may 
be  extra  orderlies,  but  that  we  may  supply  just 
that  other  element,  the  spiritual,  which,  without 
our  presence,  might  so  easily  be  forgotten.' 
It  is  a  real  dilemma  with  which  the  chaplain 


THE  CHAPLAIN'S  DILEMMA       in 

in  battle  time  is  faced.  Either  he  must  suppress 
the  natural  and  Christian  instincts  of  his  heart, 
which  prompt  him  to  supply,  so  far  as  he  can, 
the  obvious  and  pressing  need  :  or,  if  he  busies 
himself  with  such  things  he  must  run  the  risk  of 
obscuring  his  witness,  and  of  doing  little  else  but 
work  which  would  be  done  not  less  effectively 
by  the  least  trained  orderly.  The  same  dilemma, 
in  a  less  acute  form,  faces  him  behind  the  lines. 
Either  he  must  take  up  a  narrowly  religious 
attitude  ;  or,  he  must  be  in  danger  of  seeming  to 
be  nothing  more  than  a  caterer  and  amusement 
provider.  At  bottom,  the  alternatives  before 
him  are  not  different  from  those  which  face  a 
parish  priest  at  home,  who  is  in  danger  either  of 
becoming  so  much  occupied  with  organisations, 
institutes,  clubs,  etc.,  that  the  spiritual  in  him  is 
altogether  swamped,  or  of  wasting  many  hours 
of  his  time  over  the  wholly  unimportant  devo- 
tional eccentricities  of  pietistic  ladies.  The 
solution  of  course  is  compromise.  He  has  to 
concern  himself  with  many  lesser  things,  but  not 
only  must  he  not  be  tied  to  them  too  closely,  but 
also,  in  the  doing  of  them  he  has  to  be  alert  for 
opportunities  of  a  more  important  kind. 


112  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

In  the  Army,  the  problem  is  further  compli- 
cated by  one  of  the  most  deep-rooted  prejudices 
of  military  religion.  The  soldier  almost  invari- 
ably looks  at  religion  as  a  thing  apart,  a  depart- 
ment of  life,  reserved  and  separate.  That  is  true 
both  of  those  who  '  go  in  for  it '  and  of  those  who 
1  don't  hold  with  it.'  Many  a  man  who  believes 
in  God  and  leads  a  Christian  life  will  tell  you 
frankly  that  he  's  not  one  to  go  in  for  religion, 
when  all  he  means  is  that  the  sub-section  of 
religion  which  is  concerned  with  churchgoing 
does  not  happen  to  appeal  to  him.  Some  of  our 
most  faithful  communicants  will,  in  the  same 
way,  take  a  not  less  narrow  and  departmental 
view  of  religion.  Those  of  us  chaplains  who  feel 
ourselves  pressed  by  our  dilemma  are  occupying 
much  of  our  time  with  things  which  the  soldier 
would  describe  as  non-religious,  but  on  every 
opportunity  we  are  preaching  constantly  and 
insistently  the  all-inclusiveness  of  Christianity. 
Christianity  in  terms  of  ordinary  duty.  Duty 
in  terms  of  Christianity.  Christ  the  Lord  of  all 
life.  Such  are  the  themes  of  many  of  our  sermons ; 
but  the  prejudice  that  Christianity  and  the 
Church  are,  or  should  be,  something  outside  and 


THE  CHAPLAIN'S  DILEMMA       113 

beyond  ordinary  life  is  so  deep-rooted  that  it 
is  difficult  to  dislodge.  To  illustrate  the  two 
different  views  of  chaplain's  work,  I  contrasted 
just  now  the  attitude  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
priest  with  that  of  the  average  Anglican.  The 
larger  difference  may  similarly  be  brought  into 
clear  relief  if  we  compare  for  a  moment  the 
attitude  of  the  Roman  Church  and  of  our  own 
Church  of  England  to  the  war  as  a  whole. 
There  has  lately  been  published  a  collection  of 
the  utterances  of  the  Pope  on  the  present  war. 
They  contain,  as  we  should  expect,  a  strong 
appeal  for  peace.  There  are  in  these  speeches 
remarkable  omissions,  but  there  is  none  more 
striking  that  the  entire  absence  of  any  note  of 
penitence.  '  The  Pope  sits  upon  his  Apostolic 
throne  '  (and  here  I  quote  from  a  recent  number 
of  The  Challenge)  l  and  looks  out  over  a  warring 
world,  and  thinks  it  very  sad  that  it  should  be 
a  warring  world/  Not  one  word  is  said  to  sug- 
gest that  the  Church  is  in  any  way  responsible 
for  the  condition  in  which  the  world  finds  itself. 
The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  has  claimed  no 
such  detached  superiority.  He  sees  that  the 
collapse  of  a  civilisation  in  the  midst  of  which 

H 


H4          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

the  Church  has  been  at  work  for  two  thousand 
years  is  a  challenge  and  a  scandal  not  only  to  the 
world,  but  also  to  the  Church,  and  he  has  called 
the  Church  as  well  as  the  nation  to  repentance. 

Whatever  accusations  of  self-satisfaction  might, 
in  the  past,  have  been  brought  against  the 
English  Church,  there  is  no  doubt  that  to-day 
she  is  a  Church,  humbled  and  penitent.  Such  a 
condition  is  full  of  hope  for  the  future,  but  in  the 
present  it  makes  our  work  extremely  difficult. 
We  Anglican  chaplains  are  hampered  at  every 
turn  because  our  message  is  so  apt  to  shade  off 
into  the  vague  and  the  indefinite.  The  heart 
and  kernel  of  our  Gospel  remains  unchanged : 
the  Love  of  God  and  Hope  for  the  World.  God 
has  sent  us,  as  he  sent  His  Son  '  to  preach  good 
tidings  unto  the  meek,  to  bind  up  the  broken- 
hearted, to  proclaim  liberty  to  the  captives,' 
but  we  are  conscious,  with  penitence  and  shame, 
of  our  failure  to  actualise  our  message.  We 
cannot  stand  detached  and  cry  aloud  that  if 
only  the  world  would  come  to  us  all  would  be 
well.  In  theory,  in  ideal,  we  know  that  a  Church, 
a  common  allegiance  to  One  Divine  Master,  can 
alone  heal  the  world's  divisions,  but  in  practice 


THE  CHAPLAIN'S  DILEMMA       115 

and  in  fact,  we  know  that  we  are  not  ourselves, 
as  a  Church,  as  yet  near  enough  to  the  Master 
to  accomplish  His  work.  And  so  we  cannot 
speak  to  the  people  with  that  clear  ringing 
note  of  authority  which  all  would  recognise  as 
coming  from  the  representative  of  God  ;  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  we  have  now  a  unique 
opportunity  of  sharing  with  men  a  hundred 
intimate  occupations  of  daily  life,  in  a  far 
closer  and  more  natural  way  than  was  possible 
in  peace  time ;  and  though  we  cannot  yet 
speak  to  men  with  clear  authority  it  may  be 
that  in  being  privileged  to  live  and  suffer  with 
them  we  are  learning  a  truer  sympathy  which 
may  fit  us  better  in  the  coming  days  to  supply 
their  deeper  needs. 


EIGHTH    PAPER 

SOME  PRISONERS 

1  WHAT  are  you  in  for  ?  ' 

It  is  a  somewhat  ambiguous  question.  The 
prison  chaplain  wanted  to  know  the  charge, 
but  the  prisoner  with  a  keener  eye  for  the 
things  that  matter  takes  a  more  practical  view. 
'  Twenty-one  days,  sir.  Ten  more  to  go/ 

The  chaplain  repeats  his  question  in  a  different 
form. 

'  What  have  they  sent  you  here  for  ?  ' 

*  Well,  sir,  you  see,  it  was  this  way.  The 
sergeant-major  .  .  .'  Then  follows  a  long  and 
quite  obviously  untrue  story  of  victimisation. 
It  is  obviously  untrue,  on  the  face  of  it,  but 
in  the  dreary  prison  days  the  victim  has  had 
nothing  else  to  think  of,  and  turning  it  over  in 
his  mind,  adding  here  a  little  and  there  a  little, 
as  he  tells  the  story  again  and  again,  for  the 
benefit  of  the  corporal  of  the  guard  and  each 

116 


SOME  PRISONERS  117 

successive  prisoner  in  turn,  he  has  come  almost 
to  believe  it. 

So  the  chaplain  has  to  re-form  his  question 
yet  again  : 

*  What  do  they  say  you  are  in  for  ? ' 

'  Oh  !  they  say  as  I  was  drunk,  but  I  asks 
you,  sir,  could  you  get  drunk  on  this  'ere  French 
beer  ? ' 

The  chaplain  is  unprepared  with  any  answer 
on  this  knotty  point,  and  the  conversation  be- 
comes general  upon  the  one  subject  on  which  all 
are  agreed,  the  hopless  inferiority  of  French  beer 
to  honest  English  ale.  '  It 's  cheap  enough 
certainly,  but  if  you  'ad  a  sovereign's  worth  you 
couldn't  get  drunk  on  it,  not  nohow.  To  tell 
you  the  truth,  sir,  I  've  thought  about  it  a  lot, 
and  I  've  decided  that  it  ain't  worth  belly-room/ 

Presently  the  chaplain  is  able  to  break  off 
from  the  general  conversation  and  to  get  a  little 
quiet  talk  with  individuals  in  a  corner.  Many 
want  to  talk  about  themselves  and  their  case, 
but  it  is  noteworthy  that  the  majority  have  no 
sense  of  grievance,  except  perhaps  against  the 
N.C.O.  who  gave  evidence  against  them.  The 
prevalent  ideas  of  evidence  are  strange  enough. 


u8          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

Some  men  who  practically  admit  their  guilt  will 
yet  wax  righteously  indignant  over  a  trifling 
discrepancy  between  the  evidence  of  two  wit- 
nesses for  the  prosecution.  As  to  their  punish- 
ment, it  is  the  '  tying  up '  which  goes  with  field 
punishment  that  is  most  resented.  Once,  after 
a  service  at  which  we  had  sung  one  of  the  Passion 
hymns,  I  overheard  one  prisoner  remark  bitterly 
to  another :  '  And  now  they  're  going  to  crucify 
us/  But  for  the  most  part,  there  is  little  or  no 
sense  of  injustice,  which  is  in  marked  contrast 
to  the  attitude  of  civil  prisoners,  and  a  striking 
tribute  to  the  rough  fairness  of  military  law. 
The  men  know  quite  well  that  they  have  over- 
stepped the  mark  and  now  they  have  got  to  pay 
for  it.  '  And  that  fs  all  about  it.' 

Some  of  the  men  are  obviously  old  offenders, 
and  it  is  improbable  that  the  chaplain  will  find 
in  their  stories  any  vestige  of  truth.  Others  are 
clean-limbed,  open-faced  lads  whom  it  is  a  tragedy 
to  meet  within  the  barred  doors  of  a  prison. 
One  is  a  mere  child.  His  offence  :  sleeping  on 
sentry.  It  was  his  second  offence,  and  so  the 
court  martial  and  the  heavy  sentence  had  been 
of  course  inevitable,  but  he  looked  as  though  he 


SOME  PRISONERS  119 

ought  to  have  been  in  bed,  tucked  up  by  his 
mother  instead  of  standing  sentry  in  the  Flanders 
mud.  Others  are  wild,  over- vital  lads  under 
sentence  for  some  disciplinary  offence.  Most 
of  these,  however,  will  go  back  to  duty  under 
the  '  deferred  sentence '  scheme,  that  admirable 
arrangement  which  not  only  avoids  the  removal 
of  the  men  from  their  units,  but  gives  them  the 
opportunity  to  recover  their  self-respect. 

There  was  one  especially,  a  lively  Cockney, 
whose  sheet  was  marked  with  a  whole  string  of 
boyish  offences,  the  last  of  which  had  landed  him 
in  prison.  He  was  bored — rather — at  being 
where  he  was,  but  not,  I  think,  in  the  least 
ashamed.  I  met  him  again  some  months  later. 
His  battalion  was  moving  to  a  new  area,  march- 
ing by  one  of  the  long  unvarying  main  roads  of 
France. 

They  were  a  strange  untidy  crowd,  very 
different  from  the  same  battalion  at  a  parade 
march  at  home.  Most  of  the  men  carried  some 
sort  of  parcel  or  sandbags  full  of  odds  and  ends 
in  addition  to  their  official  equipment.  They 
were  followed  by  five  or  six  dogs,  for  when  a 
battalion  is  on  the  march  the  village  dogs  nearly 


120          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

always  attach  themselves  and  remain  some- 
times for  many  weeks.  The  men  are  for  the 
most  part  convinced  that  all  French  people 
neglect  or  maltreat  their  household  dogs,  and  so 
gladly  share  their  own  rations  with  such  animals 
as  care  to  attach  themselves  to  them.  The 
transport  followed  close  behind,  and  in  the  place 
of  honour,  on  the  leading  wagon,  sits  the  pride 
of  the  regiment.  To  all  appearances  he  is  a  very 
ordinary  magpie,  differing  from  others  only  in 
that  his  feathers  are  more  untidy  and  disreput- 
able than  those  of  less  privileged  birds  ;  indeed 
his  bedraggled  looks  have  always  reminded  me 
of  the  jackdaw  of  Rheims  after  the  great 
cardinal's  curse  had  fallen  upon  him.  But  he  is 
no  ordinary  bird,  this  magpie.  Twice  already 
he  has  been  *  over  the  top/  Twice  sitting  on  his 
master's  shoulder  he  has  gone  with  raiding  parties 
into  the  German  trenches,  and  returned  safe. 
He  is  an  honoured  veteran  now,  and  so  he  rides 
behind  the  regiment,  careless  of  his  appearance, 
swelling  with  conscious  pride.  The  rain  fell  in 
torrents.  Three  of  the  four  companies  were 
trudging  along,  weary,  depressed,  and  silent, 
without  even  the  energy  to  swear.  The  last 


SOME  PRISONERS  121 

company  offered  a  marked  contrast  to  the 
others.  They  marched  full  of  spirits  and  with 
light  and  springing  step,  jesting  and  singing  as 
they  went.  My  friend  of  the  prison  was  there  in 
the  leading  four,  and  whenever  the  rain  became 
more  heavy  and  unbearable,  or  the  silence  of 
depression  began  to  fall,  he  broke  in  with  some 
music-hall  catch  or  some  apt  jest. 

His  walk  showed  no  signs  of  weariness,  and 
though,  like  all  the  others  he  was  heavily  laden 
with  pack  and  full  kit,  he  was  giving  a  lift  for 
many  miles  to  one  of  the  newly  attached  dogs 
who  showed  some  signs  of  lameness.  At  last 
the  battalion  arrived  at  its  muddy  destination 
and  we  could  not  but  notice  that  his  company 
was  the  only  one  that  was  not  utterly  exhausted. 

Next  morning,  I  happened  to  be  in  the  doctor's 
improvised  dressing  station,  a  disused  cow-byre, 
when  my  friend  came  to  report  himself.  He  was 
limping  rather  badly,  but  still  wore  the  same 
inextinguishable  smile. 

'  Sorry  sir,  but  I  'm  afraid  I  've  damaged  my 
foot.' 

The  doctor,  well  used  to  '  scrimshanking,' 
was  not  sympathetic,  but  as  soon  as  he  had  seen 


122  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

the  injury  he  realised  that  it  was  a  genuine  case. 
'  That 's  bad.  When  did  you  do  it  ?  ' 

'  Well,  sir,  I  'd  a  nail  in  my  boot  two  days  ago, 
and  the  march  yesterday  finished  it.' 

The  doctor  expressed  himself  forcibly  to  the 
effect  that  the  man  was  a  fool  not  to  have  come 
to  him  before. 

'  Well,  you  see,  sir,  it  was  this  way.  I  couldn't 
leave  the  boys  just  when  we  were  going  to  be  on 
the  move,  could  I,  sir  ?  ' 

Of  such  mixed  stuff  is  human  nature. 


NINTH    PAPER 

ACTIVE  SERVICE 

IN  the  rooms  of  a  certain  studious  undergraduate 
of  Cambridge  a  Missionary  meeting  was  in  pro- 
gress. The  visiting  speaker  was  a  little  dis- 
appointed. Though  the  meeting  had  been  well 
advertised,  there  were  barely  a  dozen  men  to 
hear  him.  Comforting  himself  with  the  reflec- 
tion that  his  hearers,  however  few,  were  earnest 
and  religious  men,  he  began  to  give  them  of  his 
best.  He  spoke  eloquently  and  well  of  the  perils 
and  anxieties  of  his  far-away  mission  field,  and 
his  voice  grew  vibrant  with  enthusiasm,  as  he 
told  of  the  childlike  natives  to  whom,  in  love, 
he  had  given  his  life.  Quite  suddenly  his  elo- 
quence was  cut  short  by  the  most  infernal  clatter 
on  the  stairs  outside.  The  indignant  student  to 
whom  the  rooms  belonged  opened  the  door  to 
find  out  the  cause.  A  number  of  young  under- 
graduates, headed  by  a  notorious  ragger,  had 

128 


124  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

collected  most  of  the  College  baths  and  with 
infinite  noise  were  tobogganing  down  the  stairs 
with  the  sole  purpose  and  intent  of  interrupting 
the  pious  and  admirable  meeting  which  was 
being  conducted  in  the  student's  room.  There 
could  of  course  be  no  excuse  for  such  conduct ; 
apart  from  anything  else  it  was  disgraceful 
manners  towards  a  visiting  stranger.  But  what 
of  the  sequel  ?  Some  years  later  I  met  the 
missionary  again,  and  heard  from  him  that  his 
former  interrupter  had  become  his  most  trusted 
lieutenant.  The  missionary  was  a  man  of  dis- 
cernment and  common  sense.  He  had  taken  the 
opportunity  of  the  somewhat  informal  introduc- 
tion, bided  his  time,  and  then  found  an  occasion 
to  put  the  claims  of  his  work  in  such  a  way  as 
appealed  to  the  adventurous  mind  of  his  would-be 
opponent.  '  But  what  of  the  student  and  the 
eleven  other  faithful  and  earnest  men  who  came 
to  your  interrupted  meeting  ?  '  I  asked.  The 
missionary's  face  clouded.  '  I  have  seen  little 
or  nothing  of  any  of  these  fellows  since/  he  an- 
swered, and  obviously  he  was  unwilling  to 
follow  up  the  subject. 

That  is  a  story  and  a  memory  which  has  come 


ACTIVE  SERVICE  125 

often  to  my  mind  out  here  in  France.  We 
chaplains  are  faced  with  two  chief  obstacles  to 
our  work  both  among  officers  and  men.  First 
(and  to  avoid  any  risk  of  being  regarded  as  a 
facile  optimist,  I  would  state  it  without  qualifi- 
cation), there  is,  among  very  many,  a  definite 
preference  for  certain  acts  and  habits  known  to 
be  wrong,  and  a  consequent  refusal  to  submit  to 
the  exacting  claims  of  Christ.  That  is  the  age- 
long struggle  between  Light  and  Darkness.  It  is 
not  tragedy  but  spiritual  war,  and  it  was  to  be 
leaders  and  helpers  in  this  warfare  that  we  were 
ordained.  It  is  in  the  second  obstacle  to  our 
work  rather  than  in  the  first  that  the  elements  of 
real  tragedy  are  found,  the  conflict  not  of  right 
with  wrong,  but  of  right  with  right. 

Christianity,  as  the  soldier  all  too  often  con- 
ceives it,  is  a  negative  thing.  He  has  but  rarely 
any  idea  of  a  positive  religion.  To  him  to  be 
religious  means  not  swearing,  not  drinking,  and 
probably  not  smoking,  and  almost  the  only  posi- 
tive action  which  he  regards  it  as  involving,  is 
attendance  at  Church.  The  result  is,  that  re- 
ligion so  conceived  does  not  appeal  to  the  most 
vigorous  type  of  men.  There  are,  of  course,  to 


126          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

be  found  in  the  Army  splendid  Christians,  men 
with  a  really  active  religion,  and  these  are  the 
very  pick,  but,  broadly  speaking,  most  officers 
and  N.C.O.'s  would  agree  that  the  ordinary 
churchgoing  religious  Christians  are  not  among 
their  best.  If  that  is  true  (and  my  own  ex- 
perience, for  what  it  is  worth,  reluctantly  compels 
me  to  endorse  it),  it  is  of  course  a  fact  of  the 
utmost  seriousness,  for  men  are  attracted  to 
religion  for  the  most  part,  not  by  doctrine,  nor 
by  preaching,  but  by  example.  If  they  see  that 
the  professing  Christians  among  their  comrades 
are  not  more  but  less  effective  as  men,  that  they 
are  not  conspicuously  more  kindly  and  helpful 
and  not  at  all  more  humble  than  others,  they  will 
not  be  attracted  to  the  religion  which  such  men 
profess,  and  so  it  comes  about  that  men  often 
reject  Christianity  (or  what  they  conceive  to  be 
Christianity),  not  by  reason  of  what  is  worst  in 
them,  but  by  reason  of  what  is  best. 

The  outstanding  need,  therefore,  is  to  find 
some  method  of  presenting  the  claims  of  Chris- 
tianity in  a  way  which  will  appeal  to  the  more 
alive  and  vigorous  men.  At  the  University,  so 
long  as  religion  was  thought  to  mean  merely  the 


ACTIVE  SERVICE  127 

avoidance  of  certain  pleasant  things,  and  the 
attendance  at  stuffy  meetings,  its  influence  was 
almost  nil,  but  whenever  a  man  of  strong  per- 
sonality was  able  to  break  down  these  deeply 
engrained  prejudices  and  put  it  before  men  in  a 
positive,  claimful  way  as  an  appeal  to  join  in  a 
great  adventure,  it  attracted  an  entirely  different 
type  of  mind,  and  things  began  to  happen. 

In  the  Army,  the  assumption  that  religion  is  a 
negative  thing  is  a  prejudice  incredibly  strong. 
There  will  be  no  chance  of  undermining  it,  unless 
in  Christian  teaching  there  is  a  large  shifting 
of  emphasis  from  the  negative  to  the  positive. 
Such  a  change  will  involve  first  and  foremost  a 
greatly  increased  charity  in  judgment,  for  it  can 
not  be  denied  that  the  Christian  has  come  to  be 
thought  of,  as  one  who  is  likely  to  disapprove. 
The  chaplain  has  constantly  to  repudiate  the 
charge  of  being  shocked,  an  accusation  at  which 
in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  he  ought  to  be  indignant. 
For  surely  it  is  better  to  be  shocked  at  being 
thought  shocked  than  to  be  shocked  at  almost 
anything  else.  The  wonderful  record  of  the 
Y.M.C.A.  during  this  war,  and  its  well-earned  fame 
afford  a  useful  illustration  of  the  needed  change 


128          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

of  emphasis.  Before  the  war,  whether  fairly  or 
not,  men  were  apt  to  associate  it  with  milk  and 
water.  The  Christian  young  man  was  one  who 
gave  no  trouble  to  his  mother,  one  in  whom  his 
aunts  rejoiced.  The  Y.M.C.A.  itself  had  found 
its  place  in  comic  literature  and  in  popular  songs 
as  a  symbol  of  harmlessness,  a  place  where  it 
was  '  safe '  to  be.  In  most  men's  minds  Y.M.C.A. 
stood  for  something  purely  negative  and  rather 
soft.  Since  the  war,  the  Association  has  shown 
its  youth,  its  manhood,  and  its  Christianity  by 
rising  to  a  great  opportunity,  and  there  are 
literally  millions  of  young  soldiers  who  will  be 
eternally  grateful  to  it,  not  negatively  for  what 
it  is  not,  but  positively  for  what  it  is  and  for  what 
it  has  done  for  them. 

So,  on  more  important  levels,  if  we  are  to  appeal 
to  what  is  strongest  and  best,  it  is  essential  that 
we  should  constantly  put  before  men  the  positive 
claims  and  the  active  ideals  of  our  religion,  and 
we  have,  perhaps  more  than  anything  else,  to 
disabuse  their  minds  of  the  impression  that  we 
are  always  disapproving. 

Nothing  is  more  likely  to  help  us  in  this  direc- 
tion than  trying  to  attain  a  better  understanding 


ACTIVE  SERVICE  129 

of  the  religion  of  our  Russian  allies.  There  is  no 
command  which  the  Russian  seems  more  con- 
spicuously to  obey  than  the  precept  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  which  bids  us  not  to 
judge.  Compare,  for  illustration,  the  literature 
of  the  two  countries.  Our  English  books  are 
full  of  judgments.  Starting  at  the  bottom  of 
the  scale  with  publications,  which  perhaps  have 
no  right  to  be  described  as  literature  at  all,  the 
Sunday  School  story-book  or  the  child's  prize. 
They  tell  of  wicked  George  and  virtuous  Tommy. 
You  may,  and  probably  do,  disagree  profoundly 
with  the  author's  judgments.  Virtuous  Tommy 
may  seem  to  you  even  more  intolerable  than 
wicked  George,  but  you  are  left  in  no  doubt  as  to 
the  author's  opinion  ;  she  is  judging  all  the  time. 
Even  in  real  literature,  the  element  of  judgment 
is  conspicuous.  There  is  usually  no  difficulty  in 
seeing  who  is  the  hero  whom  the  author  judges 
worthy  of  admiration,  who  the  villain  whom  he 
judges  and  condemns.  The  canons  of  Russian 
literary  art  seem  quite  different.  There  is  little 
or  no  judgment.  Instead  there  is  infinite  com- 
passion and  a  wide-hearted  desire  to  understand. 
The  reader  is  confronted  with  large  slices  of 

i 


130          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

life,  selected  apparently  quite  uncritically.  The 
author  offers  no  judgment  himself,  nor  is  the 
reader  asked  to  judge,  only  to  try  to  understand. 
Such  an  attitude  to  life  is  the  very  antithesis  of 
the  disapproving  habit,  which  is  so  engrained  in 
English  religion,  and  it  seems  much  nearer  the 
mind  of  the  Master.  There  are  signs  of  it  in 
some  of  the  modern  school  of  English  writers, 
whether  influenced  by  Russian  literature  or  not 
I  do  not  know,  but  I  doubt  if  any  one  uninfluenced 
by  the  thoughts  of  Russia  could  have  ended  a 
book  as  Mr.  Patrick  M'Gill  ended  his  Children 
of  the  Dead  End  with  Gourock  Ellen's  prayer. 

It  is  just  this  power  of  uncensorious  sympathy 
which  is  so  delightfully  characteristic  of  the 
British  soldier,  but  which  is  unfortunately  so 
lacking  in  much  of  our  Christianity.  In  trying 
to  avoid  censoriousness,  the  chaplain  is  faced 
with  another  danger.  The  uncritical  temper  is 
profoundly  Christian,  but  there  are  in  the  world, 
and  conspicuously  in  the  Army,  two  travesties 
of  it,  two  counterfeits  which  sometimes  take  its 
place,  and  these,  the  chaplain,  if  he  is  to  retain 
respect  as  well  as  popularity,  needs  most  carefully 
to  avoid. 


ACTIVE  SERVICE  131 

There  is  the  uncritical  habit  of  mind  which 
comes  from  not  thinking,  which  takes  things  as 
they  come.  Thoughtless  people  do  often  obey 
the  letter  of  the  command  '  Judge  not,'  but  most 
certainly  this  idle  drifting  is  very  far  from  its 
spirit.  Out  here  we  are  all  in  danger  of  becoming 
somewhat  thoughtless,  for  the  pressure  of  new 
experiences  constantly  piling  themselves  upon  us 
is  apt  to  make  for  a  mere  acceptance  of  them 
without  any  attempt  to  appraise  their  value. 

There  is  also  a  falsely  uncritical  habit  of  mind 
which  is  the  result  of  not  caring.  Many  people 
are  tolerant  merely  because  they  do  not  care. 
To  them  good  and  evil  are  indifferent.  That, 
even  more  surely,  is  not  according  to  the  mind 
of  Christ,  that  is  not  following  the  example  of 
the  Master  who  blazed  out  against  sin  and  wicked- 
ness, of  the  Lamb  whose  wrath  was  terrible.  It 
incurs  the  condemnation  meted  out  by  the 
Psalmist  to  the  man  who  did  not  abhor  that 
which  is  evil. 

Christ  would  not  judge  because  He  loved  too 
much,  Gallio  would  not  judge  because  he  cared 
too  little.  The  open-hearted  tolerance  of  the 
young  soldier,  and  the  friendliness  of  the  parson 


132  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

who  is  a  good  sort,  are  often  nearer  to  the 
indifference  of  Gallio  than  to  the  generosity  of 
Christ. 

In  spite,  however,  of  the  danger  of  slipping 
into  one  or  other  of  these  counterfeits  of  the 
uncritical  temper,  true  obedience  to  the  spirit  of 
the  command  '  Judge  not '  remains  one  of  our 
greatest  needs.  Self-satisfaction  and  contempt 
of  others  nearly  always  go  hand  in  hand,  and  it 
cannot  be  denied  that  in  the  past  these  two  traits 
have  been  conspicuous  in  the  English  national 
character,  and  have  accounted  for  our  European 
unpopularity.  The  South  African  War  made  an 
enormous  difference  in  this  respect.  The  nine- 
teenth-century Englishman  believed,  more  or 
less  vociferously,  that  he  was  worth  five  wretched 
foreigners.  The  three  years'  struggle  against 
two  small  republics  shook  our  complacency,  and 
with  the  weakening  of  our  self-satisfaction  has 
come  also  a  less  critical,  more  respectful  attitude 
of  mind  towards  men  of  other  nations. 

The  present  war  is  making  even  more  difference 
in  this  direction.  Living  in  a  foreign  country  is 
widening  men's  sympathies.  There  is  no  direc- 
tion in  which  change  has  more  forced  itself  upon 


ACTIVE  SERVICE  133 

my  notice  than  in  the  men's  attitude  towards 
our  French  allies.  In  the  early  months  of  the 
war  I  heard  constantly  from  wounded  soldiers 
at  home  the  most  foolish  depreciation  of  the 
efforts  and  fighting  efficiency  of  the  French. 
Even  the  reminder  that  they  were  then  holding 
nearly  nine- tenths  of  the  line,  without  any  assist- 
ance from  us,  was  unavailing  to  shake  the  en- 
grained prejudice  as  to  their  inferiority. 

To-day,  with  the  memory  of  Verdun  and  the 
spectacle  of  the  present  French  successes  on  the 
Somme  fresh  in  our  minds,  such  depreciation  is 
no  longer  possible.  But  it  is  not  only  the  valour 
and  efficiency  of  our  Allies  that  has  undermined 
British  self-complacency  and  criticalness.  Men 
out  here  have  learned  in  a  marked  degree  respect 
for  the  enemy.  We  are  not  less  determined  to 
beat  him  than  are  comfortable  and  contemptuous 
editors  at  home,  or  those  who  collect  subscrip- 
tions for  the  various  anti-German,  hate-preserv- 
ing societies  in  England,  but  we  can  not  withhold 
a  tribute  of  respect  from  men  who  have  with- 
stood such  terrific  bombardments  as  we  have 
witnessed  in  Flanders  and  in  Picardy. 

We  have  learnt  too,  from  what  we  have  seen, 


134          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

something  of  the  ugliness  of  national  com- 
placency. There  is,  I  suppose,  no  doubt  that 
the  Germans  are  the  most  self-satisfied  people 
on  the  earth.  They  are  satisfied — the  typical 
Prussian  is  complacent  with  his  Kultur,  his 
industry,  and  all  that  is  his.  Side  by  side  with 
this  self-satisfaction  goes  a  complete  contempt 
for  the  ideals  of  all  other  nations.  It  is  of  these 
two  parents — self-satisfaction  and  critical  con- 
tempt of  others — that  has  been  born  the  dread 
child  of  war,  a  war  to  impose  the  German  ideal 
on  the  despised  races  of  the  earth. 

National  self-complacency  and  over-criticalness 
of  others  are  perhaps  breaking  down.  Unfor- 
tunately, whereas  Christians  should  be  leading 
the  way,  this  markedly  English  characteristic 
has  reappeared  in  English  religion.  The  em- 
phasis in  our  teaching  on  the  purely  negative 
precepts  of  the  Ten  Commandments  is  of  course 
a  legacy  from  Puritanism.  Puritanism  is,  in 
these  days,  out  of  fashion,  but  it  has  left  an 
extraordinarily  deep  mark  upon  our  national 
religion.  The  result  of  such  emphasis  upon 
'  Thou  shalt  not  *  has  been  an  inevitable  tendency 
to  produce  a  negative  type  of  character.  It 


ACTIVE  SERVICE  135 

appeals  to  those  whose  minds  find  it  easier  pas- 
sively to  abstain  from  evil,  and  to  disapprove 
of  evil-doers,  than  to  be  energetic  in  the  pursuit 
of  good. 

Out  here,  it  is  in  active  service  that  men  have 
found  themselves  ;  and  it  is  religion,  thought  of 
not  as  a  road  to  safety,  but  as  active  service 
towards  God  and  man,  that  is  most  likely  to 
appeal  to  them  in  the  coming  days. 


TENTH  PAPER 

HONOUR  WHERE  HONOUR  IS  DUE 

WAR,  with  all  its  myriad  evils,  is  admitted  to 
have  one  attendant  compensation,  in  the  char- 
acter results  which  it  sometimes  produces.  In 
those  who  are  taking  part  in  it,  it  has  evoked 
splendid  qualities  of  endurance  and  heroism. 
But  it  is  not  only  the  characters  of  those  who 
play  an  active  part  that  are  enlarged  and 
strengthened.  In  those  who,  by  reason  of  age 
or  sex  or  occupation  are  compelled  to  be  more 
or  less  passive  spectators,  it  has  stirred  to  a 
flame  the  quality  of  admiration — that  quality, 
which,  when  rightly  directed,  is  perhaps  the 
most  rejuvenating  and  ennobling  of  spiritual 
forces. 

The  purpose  of  this  paper  is  most  certainly  not 
to  diminish  the  volume  of  admiration  and  honour 
which  you  at  home  so  generously  accord  to  the 
men  at  the  front.  It  is,  rather,  a  study  in 

186 


HONOUR  WHERE  HONOUR  IS  DUE     137 

prejudices,  an  attempt  to  suggest  certain  direc- 
tions in  which  there  is  a  lack  of  proportion  and 
a  certain  capriciousness  in  the  lavish  bestowal  of 
your  admiration  ;  and  it  seeks  to  establish  the 
claim  of  one  class  of  men  in  particular  to  the 
principal  place  in  your  honour  and  regard. 

You  in  England  pay  no  honour  at  all  to  Ger- 
many and  the  German  soldiers.  We  in  Picardy 
have,  I  think,  a  truer  view.  We  know,  as  well 
as  you,  that  vile  and  cruel  things  have  been,  and 
still  are  done  by  the  German  Army,  but  we 
cannot  withhold  some  measure  of  respect  from  its 
soldiers.  We  have  seen  bombardments  such  as 
you  at  home  cannot  possibly  conceive.  We  have 
seen  trenches  battered  out  of  all  recognition. 
We  have  seen  places  where  there  are  no  longer 
fields  marked  with  many  shell  holes,  but  holes 
with  bare  scraps  of  field  between  them.  Some- 
times indeed  the  bombardment  has  been  so  intense 
that  the  shell  holes  are  no  longer  separable  one 
from  the  other,  but  the  whole  area  is  one  churned 
mass  of  destruction.  And  yet,  after  it  all,  in 
spite  of  it  all,  these  iron  men  are  still  there  with 
their  machine  guns  and  their  unconquerable 
courage.  Honour  where  honour  is  due. 


138          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

We  know,  as  well  as  you,  that  many,  perhaps 
most,  Germans  are  blinded  by  hate  and  pre- 
judice and  pride.  But  we  have  seen  the  heroic 
work  done  by  some  captured  stretcher  bearers 
and  medical  orderlies.  We  have  seen  them, 
working  all  day  long,  under  heavy  fire,  helping 
to  rescue  our  wounded.  Such  work  is  done  of 
course  under  compulsion,  but  when  we  see  the 
devoted  and  energetic  way  in  which  it  is  carried 
out,  we  cannot  but  feel  that  to  the  men  who  do  it 
some  measure  of  respect  and  honour  is  due. 

You  at  home  pay  an  unstinted  tribute  of 
admiration  to  Anzacs,  Canadians,  and  South 
Africans.  And  surely  you  are  right.  Nothing 
can  excel  their  valour  nor  detract  from  the 
splendour  of  the  loyalty  which  has  brought  them 
to  the  service  of  the  Commonwealth,  their  Com- 
monwealth as  well  as  ours.  Irish  Brigades  and 
kilted  regiments  appeal  to  your  imagination. 
The  Guards  recall  memories  of  the  ancient  pride 
of  Britain,  while  the  new  Armies  stir  in  you  a 
new  pride  and  a  new  thankfulness.  Most  truly 
are  all  these  worthy  of  your  admiration.  But 
do  you  sometimes  forget  the  honest  stolid  English 


HONOUR  WHERE  HONOUR  IS  DUE     139 

county  regiments,  the  regiments  of  the  Line,  who 
bear  perhaps  most  of  the  burden  ?  Honour 
where  honour  is  due. 


At  home,  you  wax  noisily  enthusiastic  over 
airmen  who  save  you  and  your  homes  from 
Zeppelins.  You  lavish  upon  them  honours  and 
huge  money  rewards.  You  are  right,  for  the 
deeds  of  these  men  are  great  and  gallant  deeds, 
but  are  you  sure  that  it  is  their  gallantry,  and 
not  your  selfishness  and  fears,  that  accounts  for 
the  greatness  of  your  gifts  ?  Do  you  remember 
with  equal  generosity  and  gratitude  the  men 
who,  not  just  once  or  twice,  on  the  exceptional 
occasion  of  a  raid,  but,  day  after  day,  over  the 
enemy's  lines,  take  far  greater  risks,  and  accom- 
plish not  less  important  tasks  ?  Do  you  realise 
the  magnificent  work  that  airmen  in  Picardy 
are  daily  doing  ?  Flying  over  hostile  guns, 
carrying  news,  directing  the  artillery,  descending 
right  down  to  use  their  own  machine  guns,  coming 
so  low,  that,  as  a  letter  found  on  a  dead  German 
put  it,  l  you  would  almost  think  that  they  were 
going  to  pull  you  out  of  the  trenches  '  ?  Do  you 
pay  to  these  men  as  much  honour  as  to  those 


140          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

who,  with  less  risk,  but  a  little  more  conspicuously, 
have  saved  your  own  skins  ? 

You  honour  heroic  doctors,  stretcher  bearers, 
and  all  the  varied  representatives  of  the  Royal 
Army  Medical  Corps.  You  are  very  right  to  do 
so.  Theirs  is  the  glorious  work  of  trying  to 
lighten  a  little  the  calamity  which  human  wicked- 
ness has  brought  upon  the  world.  Like  every  one 
else  in  the  Army  they  have  their  long  periods  of 
idleness  and  inaction.  More  often  than  most, 
their  work  is  in  safe  places,  far  behind  the  lines 
at  clearing  stations  or  base  hospitals.  Some- 
times, however,  they  are  called  upon  to  cope  with 
a  huge  inrush  of  work,  operating  or  dressing 
wounds  for  long  hours  at  a  stretch,  sometimes 
they  have  to  face  danger  to  the  full,  and  nobly 
have  they  risen  to  the  call.  To  take  one  instance 
alone,  it  would  be  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  strain 
which  is  sometimes  placed  on  squads  of  stretcher 
bearers,  already,  perhaps,  tired  out  by  many 
journeys.  Very  tenderly  they  lift  the  heavy 
burden  to  their  shoulders.  Slowly  and  carefully 
they  march.  The  physical  strain  of  the  long 
'  carry/  often  through  deep  and  clinging  mud  is 


HONOUR  WHERE  HONOUR  IS  DUE     141 

heavy  enough,  but  a  fuller  measure  of  honour  is 
due  when  you  remember  that  very  often  they 
have  to  pursue  their  slow,  even  course  along  a 
shell-swept  road.  The  unburdened  messenger 
can  run  past  dangerous  corners,  or  take  hurried 
shelter  in  a  convenient  shell  hole.  The  carrying 
party  must  go  on,  though  shells  burst  very  near. 
Often  and  often  a  whole  party  has  been  simply 
blown  to  pieces,  and  nothing  left  of  stretcher 
or  of  bearers  or  of  borne.  All  honour  to  the 
men  of  the  R.A.M.C.  and  to  battalion  stretcher 
bearers. 

Honour  the  gunners.  Their  work  is  very 
heavy.  Hour  after  hour,  day  after  day,  week 
after  week,  they  strain  at  the  great  shells  and 
labour  at  the  great  guns.  It  is  they  who  with 
unresting  but  untiring  diligence  are  preparing 
victory  in  the  only  possible  way.  A  dreadful 
and  unlovely  way  it  is,  but  experience,  dearly 
bought,  has  shown  that  there  is  no  other  way  than 
this  blighting  and  blasting  of  the  road  along 
which  our  infantry  are  to  advance. 

Honour  the  men  behind  the  gunners.     At  one 


142          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

time,  we  out  here  never  spoke  of  the  munition 
workers  except  in  slighting  terms,  and  many  of 
us  still  feel  that  it  is  wrong  that  those  who  work  in 
safety  should  receive  wages  so  disproportionately 
greater  than  those  of  the  infantryman  in  the 
daily  danger  of  the  line.  But  in  these  grim 
days  in  Picardy  we  have  learnt  to  place  so  much 
reliance  upon  the  overwhelming  supplies  which 
their  industry  is  producing  that  our  feeling 
towards  them  is  daily  changing. 

You  honour  the  men  of  the  various  special 
branches  of  the  Army.  The  galloping  ammuni- 
tion wagon,  the  recklessly  driven  transport  car, 
the  undefeated  despatch-carrying  motor-cycle, 
all  these  figure  largely  in  the  illustrated  papers. 
You  do  well  to  honour  the  men  who  drive  them, 
for  though  they  have  the  tremendous  moral  help 
which  comes  from  movement  and  action,  and 
though  their  stay  in  the  shell  area  is  of  limited 
duration,  they  are  brave  and  gallant  men  whose 
work  is  vital  to  our  success.  Honour  the  brave. 

You  in  England,  or  some  of  you,  have  even 
gone  so  far  as  to  forgo  your  traditional  right  to 


HONOUR  WHERE  HONOUR  IS  DUE     143 

crab  the  clergy.  You  pay  us  some  honour  for 
the  work  which  we  are  doing  as  chaplains,  for 
the  ordinary  dangers  which  all  of  us  are  running, 
for  the  special  risks  '  outside  the  scope  of  their 
ordinary  work  and  duty '  which  some  few 
adventurous  spirits  have  incurred.  And  I  think 
you  are  right,  for  though  our  risks  are  infinitely 
less  than  those  of  the  infantry,  we  have  this  one 
added  burden  from  which  they  are  free.  The 
soldier  is  sent,  under  clear  orders,  to  a  trench, 
and  he  must  hold  it  till  he  is  relieved.  He  has 
no  doubt  as  to  what  it  is  his  duty  to  do.  In 
times  of  emergency  the  chaplain  can  refer  to 
no  superior  and  he  has  no  orders.  Each  moment 
he  must  choose  for  himself  between  conflicting 
claims,  resisting  alike  the  temptation  to  do  con- 
spicuous things  simply  because  they  are  con- 
spicuous, and  the  other  temptation  to  stay  too 
far  behind  when  his  friends  and  companions  are 
in  the  place  of  danger. 

You  honour  the  wounded.  You  strew  their 
returning  carriages  with  roses  and  with  green. 
Your  newspapers  agitate  to  mark  them  with 
strips  of  gold.  You  are  lavish  in  your  hospitality. 


144  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

'  The  men  in  blue/  so  conspicuous  in  your  streets, 
you  have  made  your  special  charge.  You  do 
well  to  pay  them  every  honour.  Many  of  those 
who  laugh  and  jest  at  your  concerts  will  never 
know  a  day's  real  health  again.  Many  who  are 
so  gay  and  bright  in  your  daytime  visits  to  the 
wards  pass  the  long  nights  in  wakefulness  and 
pain.  Honour  the  wounded.  You,  who  see 
them  only  in  the  trim  wards  of  a  home  hospital, 
can  have  no  real  conception  of  all  that  they  went 
through  between  the  coming  of  the  bullet  and  the 
blessed,  longed-for  rest  of  the  comfortable  wards 
in  which  you  see  them. 

There  are  many  stages  of  suffering  through 
which  they  must  pass.  An  advance  is  made. 
Slowly  and  quietly,  like  soldiers  on  parade,  the 
men  are  crossing  the  No-Man's-Land,  unhurrying, 
though  they  pass  through  a  fierce  enemy  fire, 
always  with  the  haunting  fear  that  if  they  press 
on  too  far  they  will  come  into  our  own,  as  yet, 
unlifted  barrage.  Several  shells  fall  harmless, 
and  then  one  lands  right  in  the  middle  of  an  ad- 
vancing platoon.  Some  of  the  men  do  not  move 
again  ;  others,  wounded  perhaps  in  arm  or  leg, 
walk  or  crawl  back  into  our  own  lines,  though 


HONOUR  WHERE  HONOUR  IS  DUE      145 

many  a  man  thus  slightly  wounded  has  been  hit 
again  and  killed  before  ever  he  reached  a  dressing 
station  to  have  his  lesser  hurt  attended  to. 
Some  have  but  the  strength  to  crawl  or  roll  to 
such  protection  as  is  afforded  by  the  nearest 
shell  hole,  and  lie  there  for  hours,  perhaps  for 
days,  before  help  comes.  And  then,  when  the 
wound  has  become  stiff  and  sore,  there  is  the  long 
tedious  '  carry  '  down  a  winding  trench  to  the 
regimental  aid  post,  and  on  again,  after  the 
shortest  of  delays,  to  a  horse  ambulance  which 
takes  them  over  the  last  piece  of  roadless  track 
to  the  nearest  advanced  dressing  station.  There 
they  are  dressed  again  and  transferred  to  motor 
ambulances  which  bump  and  jolt  them  along 
makeshift  roads  to  a  casualty  clearing  station 
— their  first  place  of  real  rest.  Thence  after  a 
short  stay,  by  rail  and  steamer  and  rail  again 
to  the  longed-for  hospital  at  home.  Honour  the 
wounded. 

Honour  the  dead.  You  must  honour  those 
who  have  given  all  they  had  to  give.  We  who 
have  lived  with  them  up  to  the  last,  we  who  have 
gone  in  and  out  with  them  in  the  fullness  of  their 

K 


I46  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

vitality  and  strength,  and  then  have  knelt  in 
mute  prayer  beside  their  broken  bodies,  we  are 
too  near  to  sorrow.  The  bereaved  at  home, 
whose  hopes  are  shattered,  but  whose  pride 
remains  ;  theirs  is  the  overwhelming  sadness. 
It  is  you  who  must  teach  us  the  value  and  the 
worth-whileness  of  their  gift.  It  is  you  who  by 
the  honour  that  you  pay  them  must  help  us 
so  to  live,  for  them,  that  the  England  of  the 
future  may  be  worthy  of  the  sacrifice  which  they 
have  made. 

I  have  spoken  of  various  classes  and  sub- 
divisions of  men.  All  of  these  are  deserving  of 
honour,  all  of  these  and  many  more  besides  : 
the  waiting  cavalry,  the  crews  of  the  mirth- 
provoking  tanks,  the  watchful  staff,  and  all  the 
various  branches  of  army  administration  which 
are  designated  by  indecipherable  initials  ;  for 
all  are  working  and  suffering  in  the  same  cause. 
From  none  of  these  would  I  withdraw  one  frag- 
ment of  the  praise  which  they  receive,  but  there 
is  one  class  for  which  I  wish  to  claim  supreme 
honour,  one  class  to  which  I  do  not  feel  that 
sufficient  attention  is  paid,  one  class  to  which 


HONOUR  WHERE  HONOUR  IS  DUE     147 

praise  and  gratitude  most  pre-eminently  is  due. 
The  un wounded  infantryman.  There  are  some 
few  still  who  have  been  out  since  the  very  be- 
ginning. '  Mons  'eroes  '  we  call  them,  but  to-day 
they  are  very  few  in  number.  There  are  more 
who  have  endured  the  hardships  of  two  winters, 
and  very  many  who  have  '  stuck  it '  for  a  year 
or  more.  It  is  to  such  as  these  that  most  of  all 
our  gratitude  is  due,  for  it  is  they  who  bear  the 
long  burden  of  the  war  unbroken  save  by  short, 
uncertain,  and  precarious  leaves.  A  wound  is  a 
serious  thing,  but  so  great  is  the  strain  that  the 
desire  for  a  '  Blighty  one '  is  a  most  commonly 
expressed  wish.  Nine-tenths  of  such  talk,  no 
doubt,  is  talk  and  nothing  more,  but  there  are 
times  when,  in  nearly  all  of  us,  the  sight  of  a 
homeward-bound  hospital  train  stirs  feelings, 
not  of  pity,  but  of  real  jealousy. 

Let  me  try,  by  selecting  one  or  two  incidents, 
to  bring  before  you  something  of  what  the  daily 
life  of  the  infantryman  means,  that  you  may 
understand  why  it  is  to  him,  as  he  '  sticks  it ' 
here,  that  your  special  honour  and  your  special 
gratitude  is  due.  I  will  not  write  of  winter 
in  the  trenches,  for  it  has  been  so  often  described 


148  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

before,  only  be  sure,  as  you  read  this  book  before 
your  study  fire,  that  mere  imagination  cannot 
conceive  the  depths  of  either  its  misery  or  its 
mud  ;  and  if  you  were  to  come  out  here  now 
you  would  cry  with  the  Queen  of  Sheba  that  the 
'  half  had  not  been  told  you  '  ;  perhaps  also 
like  the  same  royal  lady  '  there  would  be  no 
more  spirit  left  in  you.'  Even  in  the  trenches, 
though  the  change  seems  slower  in  coming,  winter 
gives  place  to  spring.  The  welcome  sun  brings 
alleviation  from  some  of  the  worst  miseries,  of 
cold  and  slush,  but  it  brings  no  relief  from  the 
unending  dreariness  of  the  daily  round  of  trench 
monotony. 

After  many  months  of  the  unchanging  trench 
life  came  the  long-expected  summons  to  the 
Somme.  There  were  long,  hot,  dusty  marches, 
and  then  one  evening,  just  as  the  sun  was  setting 
we  came  up  over  the  crest  of  the  hill  and  had  our 
first  view  of  the  famous  tower  of  Albert.  It  was 
a  memorable  moment,  for  the  tower  was  already 
familiar  to  us  from  pictures  and  photographs  in 
the  illustrated  papers  sent  to  us  from  home.  It 
symbolised  for  us  the  Great  Offensive  in  which 
we  were  at  last  to  take  our  share.  Presently 


HONOUR  WHERE  HONOUR  IS  DUE     149 

we  passed  right  under  the  church,  and  the 
wonderful  statue,  undamaged  in  itself,  but 
bending  over  at  more  than  a  right  angle  from 
its  original  position,  seemed  to  be  extending  its 
arms  as  though  in  benediction  over  the  stricken 
country.  That  night  it  was  difficult  to  sleep. 
We,  who  for  months  had  seen  only  the  troops 
holding  the  trenches  on  our  immediate  left  and 
right,  and  not  much  of  them,  were  now  in  the 
most  crowded  area  of  all,  where  a  bare  field  was 
considered  ample  billeting  accommodation  for  a 
whole  brigade.  We  had  grown  accustomed  to 
noise,  but  not  yet  to  the  unceasing  roar  of  such 
an  accumulation  of  guns  as  the  world  had  never 
even  contemplated  before.  And  so  we  lay  wake- 
ful under  the  cold  light  of  a  perfect  moon,  and  as 
we  looked  backwards  towards  Albert,  and  forward 
to  woods  already  named  in  history,  there  came, 
I  think  to  all  of  us,  a  sense  of  greatness  as  we 
realised  that  we  were  at  last  on  that  spot  where 
the  fate  of  the  world  was  being  decided.  To 
some  of  us  too  there  came  another  thought,  that 
this  was  just  the  corner  of  God's  earth  upon  which 
the  prayers  and  intercessions  of  millions  of  faith- 
ful Christians  were  being  concentrated,  that  this 


150          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

was  the  picture  which  many  a  wakeful  woman  at 
home  was  trying  to  bring  before  her  anxious  eyes. 
Then  there  followed  a  fortnight,  a  summer 
fortnight  on  the  Somme,  when  the  troops  were 
tried  to  the  very  limit  of  human  endurance.  It 
was  not  a  time  of  great  attacks  or  of  conspicuous 
advances,  but  the  men  had  the  harder  task  of 
holding  on  under  a  ceaseless  hurricane  of  shells. 
When  there  is  no  advance  to  be  made  and  nothing 
active  to  be  done  there  is  nothing  more  nerve- 
racking  than  the  long  waiting  when  you  can 
only  sit  and  wonder  whether  the  next  shell  will 
come  just  that  much  nearer  and  end  it  all.  The 
ration-carrying  parties  worked  bravely  and  well, 
but  the  enemy  barrage  was  so  terrific  that  the 
arrival  of  food  was  inevitably  uncertain  and 
irregular.  The  water  too,  carried  in  petrol  tins, 
was  nauseous  and  disgusting.  And  so  the  long 
days  and  longer  nights  wore  on,  till  at  last  the 
relief  came  and  we  were  taken  out  to  rest  and 
refit.  A  short  march  took  us  to  the  train  which 
was  to  bring  us  to  our  rest  area.  It  was  no 
railway  journey  such  as  you  at  home  enjoy  and 
grumble  at,  but  incredibly  slow  and  unbelievably 
uncomfortable,  stopping  every  few  yards  and 


HONOUR  WHERE  HONOUR  IS  DUE     151 

jerking  on  again,  taking  many  hours  to  cover  a 
few  miles.  All  of  us  were  on  the  bare  floor  of 
cattle  trucks  ;  the  officers  were  not  so  crowded 
as  the  men,  but  even  they,  middle-aged  colonels 
included,  lay  close  together  on  the  wooden  floor. 
The  men  travel  forty-five  in  a  truck,  and  their 
full  packs  make  them  yet  more  crowded.  They 
are  restless  too,  for  almost  every  one  is  suffering 
from  the  soldier's  most  indestructible  enemy. 
Unpleasant  to  think  of  !  Yes,  but  these  are 
not  polite  paragraphs  from  Piccadilly  but  papers 
from  Picardy,  earth's  facsimile  of  hell,  and  you 
must  expect  the  minor  unpleasantness  as  well 
as  the  great  sadness. 

Then  there  followed  a  few  weeks  of  rest  and 
quiet  while  new  drafts  were  trained  and  the  old 
refreshed.  It  was  a  time  spent  in  the  pleasant 
companionship  which  supplies  whatever  there  is 
of  joy  and  happiness  in  the  grim  life  of  war.  For 
many  of  us,  perhaps  for  most,  these  weeks  were 
the  happiest  which  we  spent  in  France,  indeed 
their  happiness  was  the  material  out  of  which  the 
sorrow  of  the  coming  days  was  formed,  *  As  the 
memory  of  a  dream  which  now  is  sad  because 
it  has  been  sweet.' 


152  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

The  good  time  could  not  last  for  ever,  and  soon, 
all  too  soon,  the  order  *  Back  to  the  Somme  '  was 
received.  The  newspapers  would  have  you  be- 
lieve that  such  an  order  comes  like  a  message 
of  freedom  to  hounds  straining  at  the  leash,  but 
it  is  not  so.  The  infantryman  goes,  when  the 
order  comes,  without  hesitation,  because  he 
knows  that  it  is  his  duty,  because  he  knows  that 
he  must,  but  the  joy  of  battle  and  the  eagerness 
to  be  in  the  middle  of  it  all  again  is  but  rarely 
found  outside  the  mind  of  a  newspaper  corre- 
spondent. Another  weary  train  journey  and 
another  march  brought  us  back  nearly  to  the 
same  place  as  that  in  which  we  had  fought  before, 
but  there  were  two  great  differences.  A  glorious 
summer  had  given  way  to  a  too  early  autumn  ; 
during  our  first '  time  up  f  we  had  known  nothing 
but  sun  and  heat,  now  we  were  to  experience  the 
rain  and  the  wind  and  the  pitiless  mud.  Also, 
whatever  of  spice  the  novelty  of  our  first  period 
had  supplied,  was  gone  now.  We  knew  what 
lay  before  us,  and  we  knew  that  it  was  hell. 

This  time,  our  period  in  Picardy  lasted  five 
weeks,  sometimes  in  the  front  line,  sometimes  in 
support,  sometimes  in  reserve,  but  never  entirely 


HONOUR  WHERE  HONOUR  IS  DUE     153 

out  of  range  of  the  enemy's  guns,  never  free  from 
the  roar  of  our  own.  During  this  time,  though 
we  took  part  in  one  great  and  successful  battle, 
and  though  we  were  almost  constantly  in  contact 
with  the  Germans,  our  losses  were  not,  until  the 
very  end,  particularly  heavy,  though,  all  the  time, 
there  was  a  steady  drain  of  sick  and  wounded 
and  killed.  Then,  just  a  week  before  the  end, 
we  were  taken  right  back,  almost  out  of  range, 
for  a  few  days'  rest,  and  we  began  to  hope  that 
our  work  in  Picardy  was  finished,  but  once  again 
the  order  came  to  move  up  into  the  line.  If 
there  are  among  my  readers  those  who  still 
believe  the  rose-coloured  stories  of  the  war,  I 
would  ask  them  to  read  carefully  the  description 
of  that  day's  advance.  The  battalion  formed 
up  in  the  dark  at  four  in  the  morning  (summer 
time).  The  rain  came  down  with  a  violence 
that  I  never  remember  before  or  since,  and  very 
soon  every  man  was  soaked  to  the  skin.  We 
had  not  very  far  to  go  for  our  first  halt,  when  we 
reached  a  camp  of  tents  in  time  for  a  late  break- 
fast. Here,  under  such  shelter  as  we  could  find, 
we  stayed  most  of  the  day,  and  in  the  afternoon 
moved  off  again  for  a  long  tedious  march  along 


154          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

crowded  muddy  roads  down  which  the  water 
streamed  as  in  the  bed  of  a  shallow  river.  So 
far  we  had  been  on  roads  all  the  time  and  the 
'  cookers  '  had  followed  us,  so  at  the  next  halt 
the  men  were  able  to  have  hot  tea  and  a  meal. 
Then,  a  little  before  eight  in  the  evening,  we  left 
the  road  and  began  to  move  forward  up  into  the 
line.  We  had  been  wet  through  since  four  in  the 
morning.  You  too  have  been  wet  through  out 
shooting,  or  on  country  walks,  and,  though  you 
have  grumbled,  you  have  really  rather  enjoyed 
it.  You  have  kept  before  your  eyes  the  pros- 
pects of  the  hot  bath,  the  dry  clothes,  the  study 
fire,  and  an  egg  with  your  tea.  But  for  these 
men  there  were  no  such  prospects.  It  was 
midnight  before  they  reached  their  destination, 
and  then  for  them  there  was  no  warmth  or  change 
— only  the  muddy  shelter  of  a  battered  front  line 
trench.  Our  march  was  very  slow.  Picture  to 
yourself  the  load  that  each  man  carries.  Pack, 
rifle,  and  full  equipment  for  all.  Most  carry  in 
addition  other  loads  which  it  is  perhaps  not 
permissible  to  describe.  Every  man  has  his 
dripping  waterproof  sheet  wrapped  round  him, 
and  all  wear  heavy  steel  hats.  In  sketches, 


HONOUR  WHERE  HONOUR  IS  DUE     155 

supposed  to  be  made  at  the  front,  more  often 
than  not  the  men  are  wearing  their  old  cloth 
caps,  but  gladly  though  we  return  to  them  when 
we  are  in  rest  or  in  reserve,  I  have  never  seen  a 
man  at  the  real  front  in  Picardy  without  his 
protecting  helmet.  They  are  heavy  and  cumber- 
some, but  most  of  us  have  seen  too  many  cases 
where  they  have  saved  men's  lives  to  be  willing 
to  part  with  them  whatever  their  weight.  With 
his  many  burdens,  marching  in  mud  is  no  easy 
task  for  the  infantryman.  You  talk  at  home  of 
being  up  to  your  knees  in  mud,  you  mean  really 
that  it  is  sometimes  up  to  your  ankles,  and  very 
occasionally  splashes  to  your  knees.  Here  it  is 
an  understatement.  At  almost  every  step  the 
men  had,  with  a  definite  effort,  to  pull  their 
tired  legs  out  of  the  deep  sucking  mud,  and  there 
was  scarcely  a  man  but  fell  time  and  again  flat 
on  the  greasy  mess.  And  so,  at  midnight,  they 
arrived,  and  for  five  comparatively  quiet  days 
they  held  the  line.  Once  more  they  came  out, 
only  a  little  way  back  this  time,  for  thirty-six 
hours  of  rest.  Fortunately  it  was  fine,  and  the 
men  were  able  to  get  dry  and  warm  and  to  scrape 
some  of  the  mud  from  their  clothes.  It  was  a 


156          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

Sunday,  and  we  had  a  service  there  in  God's 
temple  of  the  open-air,  which  was  to  be  for  many 
a  last  communion,  a  viaticum  for  the  last  long 
journey.  On  Sunday  night  they  moved  up 
again. 

Next  day  came  the  great  achievement,  a 
success  with  which  all  England  rang,  a  victory 
which  will  be  written  in  letters  of  gold  in  the 
regimental  records  for  all  time,  and  which,  while 
this  life  lasts,  will  be  remembered  with  tears  in 
many  an  English  home. 

So  our  work  in  Picardy  is  for  the  present  over, 
and  we  go  back  a  weakened  battalion  to  the 
comparative  quiet  of  ordinary  trench-life.  Honour 
where  honour  is  due.  The  infantryman  does  not 
complain.  The  work  has  to  be  done  and  he 
knows  that  he  has  to  do  it,  but  it  is  a  very  heavy 
burden  that  he  is  bearing.  The  newspapers  give, 
I  think,  quite  a  wrong  impression  of  his  attitude. 
Special  correspondents  would  have  you  believe 
that  the  infantry  soldier  invariably  goes  both  in 
and  out  of  action  with  song  and  jest  and  merry 
laughter.  Perhaps  that  was  true  at  the  very 
first.  Many  of  those  who  enlisted  in  the  summer 
of  1914  went  in  the  spirit  of  men  expecting  an 


HONOUR  WHERE  HONOUR  IS  DUE     157 

open-air  holiday.  With  the  wounded,  cheeriness 
has  become  almost  a  convention.  They  read 
the  papers  and  they  know  what  is  expected  of 
them.  Also,  by  the  time  you  talk  with  them, 
they  are  far  away  from  the  strain  and  pressure. 
Here,  on  the  spot,  that  light-hearted  gaiety  has 
almost  gone.  The  men  are  bright  enough  in 
rest  billets  or  at  the  base,  but  there  is  no  longer 
any  pretence  that  they  are  yearning  to  be  back 
in  the  fight,  there  is  no  longer  any  attempt  to 
deny  that  they  hate  and  dread  their  turn  in  the 
line.  You  are  told  that  we  go  in  and  out  of 
action  with  song  and  laughter.  You  expect  such 
stuff  as  that,  and  so,  of  course,  you  are  supplied 
with  what  you  want.  But  it  is  not  true.  How 
could  we  go  into  action  in  such  a  spirit  when  we 
know  the  horrors  that  lie  before  us  ?  Still  less 
could  we  come  out  with  laughter.  We  are  not 
such  callous  brutes  as  that.  Great  victories 
mean  a  great  price,  and  we  pay  it  in  our  friends. 
For  you,  apart  from  an  individual  here  and  there 
whom  you  knew  and  loved,  the  casualty  lists 
are  just  numbers.  It  is  not  so  for  us.  After  a 
battle  in  which  the  regiment  has  been  engaged 
there  is  no  group  of  men  sitting  round  an  evening 


158          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

fire  but  is  conscious  of  tragic  gaps.  For  us  they 
are  not  just  numbers  of  killed,  of  wounded  and 
of  missing.  It  is  Harry  whom  we  shall  not  see 
on  earth  again.  Jack  whose  days  of  active  life 
are  over.  Old  Bill  who  always  kept  things 
lively — poor  old  Bill.  Tom,  '  What 's  become 
of  Tom  ?  '  no  one  seems  to  know.  And  a  host 
of  others  who  were  our  friends  and  our  daily 
companions. 

So  through  the  long  months,  the  infantryman 
who  remains  bears  the  heaviest  burden,  his  load 
of  discomfort,  dirt,  and  danger,  the  loss  of  friends 
and  of  happy  companionship.  Have  I  justified 
my  claim  that  it  is  to  him  that  our  highest  honour 
and  our  deepest  gratitude  is  due  ?  Still  he  holds 
on,  for  our  sakes  and  for  the  England  of  our  sons, 
carrying  to  a  final  end  the  work  which  his  dead 
friends  began. 

Honour  where  honour  is  due. 


ELEVENTH    PAPER 

A   NIGHT   IN   THE   CRATERS1 

WE  are  to  meet  at  the  cross  roads.  '  Oxford 
Circus,'  the  noticeboard  calls  it.  Sloane  Street, 
Park  Lane,  and  High  Street  run  into  it,  with 
disconcerting  inconsistency.  There  are  no  motor 
buses  nor  busy  taxis  in  this  Oxford  Circus  of 
ours.  A  shell- torn  tree  stands  in  the  middle 
of  it  and  all  is  silence. 

The  last  glimmer  of  a  June  sunset  is  fading 
in  the  west  as  the  men  arrive.  They  come  in 
small  parties,  for  their  road  lies  along  an  exposed 
corner  which  is  not  healthy  to  pass  in  large 
bodies — Dead  Man's  Corner,  we  call  it,  with 
an  unreal  smile.  It  is  a  place  in  full  view  of  the 
German  artillery.  Last  week  twenty  men  were 
killed  there  by  a  single  shell.  The  week  before 

1  This  paper  is  the  only  one  written  before  our  brigade  had 
taken  its  turn  in  the  Somme  offensive.  Much  of  it  would  have 
been  different  had  it  been  written  later,  but  I  have  left  it 
unaltered  as  a  record  of  an  early  impression. 

169 


160          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

the  wreck  of  a  transport  wagon  and  the  blood  of 
horses  lay  for  some  time  by  the  roadside,  till  the 
workers  of  the  night  cleared  it  all  away.  When 
we  can,  we  go  by  another  road,  and  when  duty 
forces  us  to  pass  it  we  make  a  jest  of  it,  but 
unconsciqusly  the  step  quickens,  and  when  we 
are  past  we  breathe  a  sigh  of  relief  from  a 
strain  which  we  had  hardly  acknowledged  even 
to  ourselves.  Now  the  order  has  gone  forth 
that  men  going  that  way  must  proceed  in 
small  parties. 

1  Oxford  Circus '  is  the  arranged  place,  where 
the  company  is  to  be  re-formed.  '  All  present, 
sir ! '  The  sergeant' swords  mean  more  to  the  wait- 
ing captain  than  he  would  like  to  admit.  Rifles 
are  loaded,  and  the  company  begins  to  move  off 
towards  the  long  communication  trench  which 
leads  to  our  destination.  It  is  dark  now  and 
difficult  to  distinguish  clearly,  but  there  is  a 
martial  sound ;  the  tramp  of  armed  men  and 
a  military  jingle.  The  sound  conjures  up  for- 
gotten pictures  of  the  pomp  of  war,  of  spurs  and 
rattling  scabbards,  but  as  the  men  come  closer 
the  illusion  fades,  and  the  facts  emerge  out  of  the 
deceptive  darkness.  The  sound  we  heard  is  but 


A  NIGHT  IN  THE  CRATERS        161 

the  clink  of  pick  on  shovel,  for  we  are  all  navvies 
now.  These  men,  drawn  from  all  classes,  many 
of  them  quite  unaccustomed  to  manual  labour, 
are  content  now  to  lay  down  their  rifles  by  their 
side  and  to  work  all  the  night  through  with  spade 
and  pick. 

Two  days  ago  the  sector  to  which  we  are  going 
was  a  model  of  perfectly  constructed  trenches. 
The  front  line  had  been  sandbagged  with  months 
of  labour,  the  dug-outs  were  furnished  and  estab- 
lished residences,  some  of  them  even  being  fitted 
with  electric  light.  Last  night  the  enemy's 
mines  ruined  the  work  of  months.  To-night  we 
are  going  to  begin  it  all  again.  And  so  the  futile 
round  goes  on. 

They  are  not  our  trenches,  we  are  merely  a 
working  party  from  the  next  sector  of  the  line. 
We  are  coming  to  help,  but  our  welcome  is  not 
encouraging.  The  battalion  who  are  holding 
the  trenches,  or  what  is  left  of  them,  are  expect- 
ing their  relief  to-night,  and  the  arrival  of  our 
party  raises  their  hopes :  '  Are  you  the  A's  ? ' 
a  voice  asks  out  of  the  darkness.  '  No,  only 
a  working  party  of  the  B's.'  No  darkness  is 
thick  enough,  no  silence  deep  enough  to  conceal 

L 


162  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

the  disappointment  and  disgust  of  the  waiting 
men. 

Guides  direct  us  to  our  places.  The  men  are 
allotted  to  different  sections  of  the  great  craters 
and  begin  to  work  in  the  silence  and  the  darkness. 
From  time  to  time  great  shells  burst  near  us. 
There  are  no  trenches  left  in  which  to  shelter, 
and  at  frequent  intervals  we  lie  flat  upon  the 
ground,  to  get  up  sticky  with  chalk,  wet  and 
dirty.  '  Any  one  hurt  ? '  '  All  well,  sir.'  '  Carry 
on/ 

All  through  the  night  we  move  from  party 
to  party,  admiring  the  men's  work,  promising 
a  rum  ration  when  it  is  over,  and  trying  to  en- 
courage them.  There  is  much  to  admire.  Men 
work  hard  and  need  little  urging  when  they  are 
working  on  the  surface  and  digging  cover  for 
themselves. 

Sometimes  a  great  flare  light  glows  in  the  sky. 
We  stand  rigid  and  immovable,  looking  out  over 
the  great  heaps  of  chalk,  glistening  white  in  the 
unnatural  glare  and  over  the  wide  yawning 
craters.  It  is  strangely  like  a  photograph  of  the 
mountains  of  the  moon. 

One  party  is  a  little  worried.     Theirs  is  an 


A  NIGHT  IN  THE  CRATERS        163 

'  insanitary  spot/  Too  many  big  shells  have 
burst  near  them.  But  a  young  officer,  a  boy 
almost,  strolls  about,  unconcernedly  on  the  top 
above  the  digging  men.  Fear  in  his  heart — sick 
and  deadly  fear — but  not  a  sign  on  his  face,  and 
the  men  turn  to  again  with  a  new  courage. 

Presently  the  soft  rain  turns  into  a  heavy  down- 
pour. The  new  turned  chalk  begins  to  fall  back 
into  the  fresh  dug  trench.  The  men  swear  softly 
as  they  continue  to  work  in  silence.  But  now,  a 
quickening  of  the  breeze  and  the  first  lightening 
of  the  sky  heralds  the  dawning  of  the  day — the 
day  when,  in  this  topsy-turvy  world  of  ours,  no 
man  can  work — and  the  men  gather  up  their  tools 
and  file  quickly  out.  There  is  no  delay  now  and 
no  hesitation.  This  work  on  the  craters  is  work 
at  the  mouth  of  hell,  and  we  hurry  from  it  the 
moment  the  order  for  release  is  given. 

Covered  with  chalk  and  clay,  wet  to  the  skin, 
laden  with  rifles  and  tools,  we  trudge  back  in  the 
opening  day.  Once  out  on  the  road,  silence  is 
broken  and  cigarettes  are  lighted.  Thrice  blessed 
cigarette  !  Often  it  is  the  one  thing  that  stands 
between  the  soldier  and  utter  misery.  The 
cigarette  out  here  plays  many  parts,  and  fills 


164  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

many  voids.  It  has  often  to  take  the  place  of 
food  or  drink,  to  be  a  substitute  for  sleep,  and 
to  be  our  only  fire. 

We  do  not  laugh  or  jest  much  on  the  way  out. 
It  is  only  in  the  newspapers  that  the  soldier  is 
always  bright.  We  are  too  tired  and  perhaps  too 
full  of  unexpressed  thankfulness  to  God,  but  we 
talk  a  little,  disjointedly,  and  with  many  pauses. 
Mostly  we  talk  about  the  rain  and  the  Boche 
and  the  general  beastliness  of  it  all.  One  old 
soldier  indulges  in  a  sardonic  jest.  He  is  aching 
with  rheumatism,  overburdened  with  tools  and 
equipment,  and  can  barely  move  his  soaked  and 
mud-caked  body  even  at  the  slow  pace  at  which 
we  march.  '  Remember  that  picture,  sir/  and 
he  reminds  me  of  the  portrait  of  a  clean  and 
smiling  youth  with  which  the  recruiting  authorities 
at  one  time  covered  the  walls  of  London.  *  'Appy 
and  satisfied — looks  like  it,  don't  it,  sir  ?  '  But 
it  is  all  grousing,  not  grumbling.  No  one  doubts 
the  necessity  of  it  all.  Not  till  next  day  did  I 
hear  a  note  of  bitterness,  and  then  it  was  the 
expression  of  a  thought  which  is  uppermost  in 
many  men's  minds  to-day.  '  It 's  got  to  be  done, 
and  we  'as  to  do  it.  But  the  infantryman  as 


A  NIGHT  IN  THE  CRATERS        165 

'as  all  the  danger  'as  all  the  'eavy  work  as  well 
and  none  of  the  pay.  Them  fellows  down  at  the 

base  as  never  sees  a shell  are  getting  their 

three  and  four  bob  a  day,  and  at  'ome  they  're 
making  enough  money  to  sink  yer  in  liquor  and 
strikes  for  more.' 

What  about  the  solidarity  of  labour  after  the 
war  ?  Will  the  old  division  into  workers  and 
capitalists  be  complicated  by  a  more  acutely  felt 
division  between  those  who  suffered  and  those 
who  made  profit  from  the  war  ? 


TWELFTH    PAPER 

IN  A  REGIMENTAL  AID   POST 

MOST  of  these  papers  have  been  written  during 
periods  of  rest  '  behind  the  lines/  This  Somme 
fighting  is  so  terrific  that  long  unbroken  spells  of 
it  would  be  beyond  human  endurance,  and  so 
we  go  back,  at  intervals,  for  short  periods  of  rest, 
and,  in  the  case  of  some  battalions,  very  literally, 
of  re-creation.  It  is  at  such  times,  in  the  comfort 
and  comparative  luxury  that  is  afforded  by  the 
fourth  part  of  a  tent,  or  one  corner  of  a  farm- 
house room,  that  these  papers  have  been,  for  the 
most  part,  put  together.  I  want,  however,  to 
write  just  one  here,  in  the  thick  of  it,  on  some 
dirty  scraps  of  paper,  torn  from  a  damp  and 
dog-eared  book. 

This  paper  is  going  to  be  dull.  Those  who 
look  for  thrilling  adventures,  for  tales  of  heroism 
and  hairbreadth  escapes,  must  leave  it  unread. 
It  is  my  purpose  to  give  a  faithful  record  of  three 

166 


IN  A  REGIMENTAL  AID  POST     167 

days  in  a  regimental  aid  post,  during  a  period 
when  I  happen  to  have  the  time  to  write  it  down. 
There  have  been,  of  course,  other  days  when  every 
moment  has  been  fully  occupied,  but  this  record 
of  dullness  relieved  by  occasional  horror  is  more 
truly  typical  than  would  be  the  account  of 
pressure  and  of  rush. 

We  are  sitting  on  the  westward  slope  of  a  long 
shallow  valley.  Our  home  is  a  surface  dug-out. 
It  shields  us  from  flying  l  pieces,'  but  we  owe 
our  safety  less  to  that,  than  to  the  slope  of  the 
friendly  hill  behind  us  ;  on  the  eastward  slope 
neither  trench  nor  dug-out  can  ensure  protection. 
All  along  the  valley  are  many  guns.  The  more 
distant  keep  up  a  never  ceasing  roll,  with  occa- 
sional deeper  thuds.  Almost  exactly  in  front  of 
us,  stretching  across  both  slopes,  are  two  batteries 
of  field  artillery.  There  is  no  thud  or  roll  here, 
but  a  sharp,  ear-deafening  bark.  They  are  very 
close,  and  the  flame  of  them  blows  hot  to  the  very 
mouth  of  our  dug-out.  Immediately  outside 
the  entrance  is  a  rubbish  heap.  It  is  not  an 
official  '  dump  '  or  collecting  place,  but  one  that 
has  just  happened.  Wounded  men,  coming  here 
to  be  dressed,  have  thrown  down  their  equipment, 


i68  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

and  other  things  have  been  added  to  the  pile. 
There  are  tins  of  all  shapes  and  sizes,  blood- 
soaked  rags,  live  bombs,  belts,  bayonets,  sand- 
bags, and  a  hundred  other  cast-off  possessions. 
Also  there  are  flies.  It  is  a  very  kingdom  of 
Beelzebub.  His  myriad  subjects  blacken  half 
the  pile.  Our  battalion  is  further  on,  and  we  wait 
here  and  hope  unfeignedly  for  idleness.  Fortun- 
ately, they  are  for  the  present  in  an  easy  place, 
and  we  have  little  work  to  do  ;  and  so  we  wait. 

We  arrived  in  the  dark,  and  all  night  long  the 
near  guns  barked  and  the  far  guns  thundered  ; 
while  every  now  and  then  we  heard  one  of  the 
really  heavy  shells  travelling  high  over  our 
heads.  When  you  are  living  close  to  the  harsh 
clap  of  field  guns,  the  passing  of  a  great  shell  has 
an  extraordinary  air  of  dignity  and  serenity, 
almost  of  peace.  You  do  not  hear  the  explosion 
of  the  gun,  nor  of  the  arriving  shell,  only  the  quiet 
unhurrying  progress  of  the  invisible  death  far  up 
in  the  skies. 

The  first  morning  broke  clear  and  bright,  and 
for  a  little  space  a  German  observation  balloon 
hung  in  the  sky,  and  then  for  two  hours  the 
valley  was  shelled  without  cessation.  Shell  after 


IN  A  REGIMENTAL  AID  POST     169 

shell  came,  searching,  searching  for  the  batteries 
which  all  night  long  had  been  pouring  death  into 
the  German  lines.  Crouched  in  the  entrance  of 
our  dug-out  we  sat  and  watched.  They  fell  on  the 
ridge  behind  us  and  they  plastered  all  the  valley 
and  the  eastward  slope.  Flying  mud  and  a  few 
pieces  reached  us  where  we  sat  and  made  us  take 
a  personal  interest  in  the  spectacle  we  were 
watching  ;  but  thanks  to  our  sheltering  hill  we 
came  through  it  safe  and  unharmed.  Time  after 
time  the  shells  burst  almost  in  the  gun  pits  or  the 
trench,  but  twice  only — or  rather,  three  times — 
did  they  take  effect.  By  one  shell,  two  gunners 
on  the  opposite  slope  were  killed.  In  the  trench 
behind  us,  one  man  was  half  buried  by  a  fall  of 
earth  from  a  collapsing  trench.  They  dug  him 
out  of  the  loosened  soil,  and  a  stretcher  bearer 
was  helping  him  away  (for  he  was  badly  shaken) 
when  yet  another  shell  burst  quite  near  and 
finished  him.  It  seemed  a  strange  chance  that 
with  hundreds  of  shells  falling  harmless  two 
should  come  to  a  single  man  ;  but  that  is  just 
the  unevenness  of  war.  Sometimes  hundreds  of 
shells  will  do  no  harm,  another  time  a  single 
shell  will  kill  a  dozen  men.  Sometimes  one  will 


170          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

burst  near  a  group  standing  close  together,  and 
leaving  the  nearer  men  untouched,  a  piece  will 
kill  just  one  man  in  the  very  middle  of  the  group. 
By  10.30  the  storm  was  over.  Three  graves  in 
the  valley  are  its  only  record  here.  Later  in  the 
day  I  buried  the  bodies  just  as  they  were,  wrapped 
in  their  soldier's  coats,  and,  as  I  write,  I  can  see 
three  new  crosses  facing  us  down  there  in  the 
valley. 

For  the  rest  of  the  day  things  were  fairly 
quiet.  Sometimes  for  ten  minutes  together  a 
parcel  of  mixed  shells  arrived,  H.  E.,  shrapnel  and 
gas,  but  our  own  guns  went  on,  undiscouraged, 
all  the  time.  Their  sound  is  the  inevitable  back- 
ground of  life  down  here  in  Picardy,  and  though 
their  noise  be  deafening  we  count  things  quiet 
if  the  enemy  is  not  replying.  So  far  not  one  of 
our  own  men  has  come  down,  and  so  in  the  after- 
noon the  doctor  and  two  orderlies  go  up  to 
battalion  headquarters  to  inquire.  He  comes 
back  rejoicing.  All  is  quiet  there,  and  there  has 
not  been  any  shelling  nor  a  single  casualty. 
And  so,  unmindful  perhaps  of  the  little  crosses 
below  us,  which  mark  the  last  resting-place  of 
men  of  other  regiments,  we  sit  down  in  great 


IN  A  REGIMENTAL  AID  POST     171 

spirits  to  our  tea.  We  have  scarcely  begun 
when  an  orderly  comes  hurrying  in  to  tell  us  that 
just  after  the  doctor  left,  one  shell  had  fallen 
close  to  battalion  headquarters  and  taken  a  toll 
of  nine  casualties.  Two  hours  of  shelling  here  in 
the  morning  results  in  a  total  of  three  casualties, 
one  single  shell  there  in  the  afternoon  accounts 
for  nine.  What  wonder  if  men  are  apt  to  become 
somewhat  fatalistic.  Eight  out  of  the  nine  are 
bandaged,  and  walk  or  are  carried  to  the  ambu- 
lance, one  alone  needs  no  more  help  in  this  world. 
After  they  have  gone,  we  settle  down  to  wait  and 
watch  again,  the  doctor,  the  orderlies  and  I,  a 
somewhat  saddened  group.  All  day  long  we 
talk.  It  is  mostly  reminiscences  ;  unutterably 
wearisome,  infinitely  dull,  but  talking  passes  the 
time  and  deadens  thought,  and  after  all  nobody 
need  listen.  It  would  be  monotonous  indeed, 
except  for  occasional  short  bursts  of  shelling,  and 
though  one  hates  them,  they  are  almost  welcome 
as  a  relief  from  the  dreary  waiting. 

The  long  day  ends  at  last,  and  the  long  noisy 
night  passes  to  another  morning.  This,  too,  is 
uneventful  in  blessed  contrast  to  other  times, 
when  all  day  and  all  night  we  have  been  busy 


172          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

with  steady  streams  of  wounded  men.  For 
these  few  days  the  battalion  is  in  reserve,  and 
they  seem  to  have  found  a  quiet  place.  This 
day  there  has  been  but  one  incident.  In  the 
morning  there  were  men  walking  about  every- 
where in  the  valley.  It  seemed  a  rash  thing  to 
do  with  German  observation  balloons  ever  on 
the  watch.  Nemesis  came,  but,  as  so  often  in 
this  world,  it  did  not  come  to  those  who  seemed 
to  be  courting  disaster,  but  to  those  who  were 
taking  right  and  reasonable  precautions.  In 
front  of  the  batteries  and  on  the  eastward  slope 
there  runs  a  single  trench  and  it  is  packed  close 
with  men.  Yesterday,  dozens  of  shells  fell  near 
it  and  did  no  harm.  This  morning  one  shell 
came  over  and  landed  exactly  in  the  trench. 
Planks,  earth,  a  sheet  of  corrugated  iron — and 
something  else — flew  into  the  air.  As  the  smoke 
cleared  three  or  four  figures  rushed  into  the  open. 
One  man  holds  his  back  and  moans  piteously  as 
he  runs,  another  with  his  hand  at  his  head  calls 
insistently  for  stretcher  bearers,  while  a  third 
runs  with  his  arm  hanging  limp  at  his  side  ;  and 
since  even  from  the  tragedies  of  war  the  comic 
is  never  entirely  absent,  leading  them  all  and 


IN  A  REGIMENTAL  AID  POST     173 

running  at  a  sprinter's  pace  is  one  man,  almost 
if  not  quite,  unhurt.  The  wounded  run  across 
the  valley  to  our  post  and  their  needs  are  soon 
attended  to,  but  presently  out  of  the  broken 
trench  they  bring  the  crumpled  mutilated  bodies 
of  six  others.  Later  in  the  day  six  more  crosses 
stand  there  in  the  valley.  My  cemetery  grows 
fast  these  days. 

The  last  day  and  night  of  our  stay  was  even 
more  uneventful.  No  shells  came  our  way  at  all, 
but  away  on  the  right  there  was  heavy  firing  and 
all  day  long  our  valley  road  was  a  veritable  Via 
Dolorosa.  Badly  wounded  men  limped  slowly 
along  or  helped  others  worse  than  themselves. 
The  lightly  wounded  hurried  on,  intent  only  on 
getting  out  of  it  all  to  some  place  of  rest  and 
quiet,  and  at  intervals  slow  moving  parties 
carried  laden  stretchers.  Towards  evening  a 
pitiless  rain  turned  the  already  dirty  tracks  into 
seething  slush.  Soon  after  midnight  we  joined 
the  battalion,  who  came  slipping  and  sliding, 
mud-covered  and  soaked,  on  their  way  out  for 
three  days'  rest.  Then  back  again  to  the  mud 
and  the  cold,  the  shells — and  the  glories  of  the 
greatest  battle  in  history. 


THIRTEENTH    PAPER 

WHAT   IS  TRUTH? 

DEATH  has  become  a  common  sight  of  late. 
Death  from  gas.  Death  from  wounds.  Death 
from  shock.  Death.  But  the  countless  sorrows 
of  the  Somme  have  not  in  the  least  served  to 
obliterate  from  my  mind  the  memory  of  the 
first  time  I  saw  a  man  killed  by  a  German  bullet. 
It  was  just  at  '  stand  to/  that  twilight  hour 
when  every  one  has  to  be  on  the  alert  against 
surprise  attacks.  A  tall  man  came  out  from 
some  corner  where  he  had  been  snatching  a  short 
period  of  rest,  for  in  the  trenches  we  get  our  rest 
in  bits,  where  and  when  we  can.  He  was  still 
rubbing  the  sleep  from  his  eyes.  It  was  in  a 
trench,  further  north,  where  our  lines  and  the 
German  drew  very  close.  The  newly  awakened 
man  came  into  the  bay  where  we  were  standing. 
Before  going  to  his  post,  he  stood  up  on  the 
fire-step,  for  one  moment,  to  look  round. 

174 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ?  175 

Familiarity  breeds  carelessness,  but  in  his  case 
he  was  not  out  of  the  shelter  of  the  trench  for 
more  than  a  very  few  seconds.  A  German 
sniper  must  have  had  his  rifle  ready  trained  on 
the  very  spot,  for  with  appalling  suddenness,  and 
before  ever  we  heard  the  report  of  the  shot,  the 
newly  awakened  man  fell  backwards  and  lay 
silent  in  his  last  sleep  with  a  bullet  in  his  temple. 

The  sight  of  him  lying  there  brought  vividly 
to  my  mind  a  picture  which  at  one  time  was 
very  popular  at  home — not  by  resemblance  but 
by  pathetic  contrast.  You  remember  the  picture 
of  the  Great  Sacrifice  which  at  one  time  was  to 
be  seen  in  every  shop  window.  A  young  lad 
lies  on  the  ground.  A  tiny  bullet  hole  shows  in 
his  temple,  and  from  it  flows  the  faintest  streak 
of  blood.  Over  him  hangs  the  shadowy  figure 
of  the  Crucified.  '  Greater  love  hath  no  man  than 
this  that  a  man  lay  down  his  life  for  his  friends/ 

It  was  contrast  rather  than  resemblance  that 
brought  the  picture  to  my  mind  that  night. 
Like  the  young  lad  in  the  picture,  the  man  whom 
I  saw  die  had  a  bullet  wound  in  the  temple,  but 
there  the  likeness  ceased.  Here  was  no  calm 
death,  but  a  ghastly  mess  of  blood  and  brains 


176          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

and  mud,  on  his  face  and  in  the  surrounding 
trench ;  and  in  the  stark  horror  of  the  moment  I 
could  not  see  the  Crucified  at  all.  Before  they 
carried  him  away  we  gathered  round  the  body, 
and  I  said  a  few  words  of  prayer  for  him  and  for 
those  who  loved  him.  There  was  a  minute  or 
two  of  hushed  silence,  and  then  the  men  went 
to  their  allotted  posts.  Five  minutes  later  I 
walked  round  with  the  company  commander, 
and  on  our  way  we  found  a  group  of  men  with 
fixed  bayonets  gaily  chasing  rats  behind  the 
sandbags. 

What  is  truth  ?  Which  is  nearer  to  reality  ? 
The  picture  which  ignores  the  material  ugliness 
and  insists  on  the  spiritual  worth  of  the  sacrifice, 
or  the  muddy  bloody  facts,  and  the  rat  hunt 
and  forgetting  ?  It  is  easy  to  reject  the  picture 
as  unrealistic,  but  on  the  other  hand  the  weight 
of  visible  material  ugliness  is  apt  to  obscure  the 
finer  shades  of  truth.  There  was  the  rat  hunt, 
but  first,  there  was  the  little  time  of  hushed  and 
solemn  silence.  The  dirt  and  ugliness  of  life  is 
so  insistent  that  we  have  had  to  make  a  jest  of 
it.  Bairnsfather  cartoons  are  the  most  popular 
adornment  of  every  mess.  He  has  done  great 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ?  177 

service  in  laughing  away  sham  heroics,  and  in 
drawing  ugliness  simply  as  the  ugly  thing  it  is, 
but   I   doubt  if  his   work   is   wholly  for  good. 
Raemakers,  though  less  popular,  is  greater,  not 
only  as  artist,  but  as  prophet,  for  while  he  has  not 
disguised  the  ugliness,  he  has  made  us  feel  the 
greatness  too.     It  is  well  for  you  at  home  that 
you  should  realise  how  unbeautiful  is  our  life 
somewhere  in  France  ;   it  is  well  for  us  out  here 
to  laugh  at  ourselves  ;   but  it  will  be  a  real  loss 
if  we  seek  relief  from  ugliness  only  in  seeing  its 
funny  side,  and  forget  its  deeper  meaning.     We 
shall  not  forget  the  tragedies,  but  we  may  forget 
their  value.     Sham  heroics  make  no  appeal  to 
the  sure  instincts  of  the  active  soldier  ;    fine 
writing  in   the  newspapers  will   nearly  always 
provoke  his  contemptuous  mirth,  but  at  times 
of  stress  or  when  emotion  has,   in  any  way, 
broken  through  his  reserve,  he  will  show  you 
that  the  ideal  side  of  war  is  still  a  reality  for  him. 
It  is  among  the  officers  that  there  is  more  danger 
lest  the  dirt  and  discomfort  of  life  should  over- 
whelm their  appreciation  of  its  deeper  meaning. 
Certainly  you   hear  more  cynicism  about  the 
origin  and  causes  and  importance  of    the  war 

M 


1 78  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

among  officers  than  among  men,  but,  of  course, 
this  may  only  mean  that  their  reserve  is  stronger, 
and  that  with  them  it  is  harder  than  with  the 
men  to  get  behind  the  material  pose  with  which 
we  English  love  to  disguise  our  deeper  feelings, 
and  which  earns  for  us  among  our  enemies  the 
designation  of  hypocrites. 

We  are  often  told  that  the  men  who  have  faced 
death  in  the  trenches  will  return  to  civil  life  with 
a  quickened  spiritual  outlook.  It  is  possible, 
and  in  the  case  of  some  it  is  certain,  but  on  the 
other  hand  the  material  ugliness  of  war  is  here 
so  horribly  in  the  foreground  that  it  is  just  as 
likely  that  in  many  of  us,  our  sense  of  the  spiritual 
will  be,  not  awakened,  but  deadened.  We  know 
now  that  a  description  of  war  which  would  have 
us  believe  it  all  glory  and  grandeur  is  very  far 
from  truth.  On  the  other  hand,  its  obvious  ugli- 
ness is  equally  far  from  being  the  whole  truth, 
though  it  is  hard  for  us  to  see  beyond  it.  It  is 
you  at  home  who  must  help  us  to  have  con- 
stantly before  our  eyes  the  ideal  side  of  war. 
You  will  do  it  best,  not  by  blind  hero  worship, 
nor  by  thoughtless  applause,  but  by  raising  your 
own  standard  of  life  and  service,  so  that  the 


WHAT  IS  TRUTH  ?  179 

England  for  which  men  have  fought  and  died 
may  be  more  worthy  of  their  sacrifice.  You  have 
made  heroes  of  your  soldiers,  you  will  serve  them 
best,  and  best  show  your  gratitude  by  living  and 
helping  them  to  live  as  men  called  to  the  service 
of  a  great  cause  and  worthy  of  their  calling. 


FOURTEENTH    PAPER 

WASTE 

HERE  in  Picardy  desolation  and  death  force 
upon  one's  thoughts  a  dreadful  sense  of  un- 
utterable waste,  but  it  is  strange  how,  amid  all 
the  chaos,  some  little  thing  will  lie  like  a  dead 
weight  upon  the  memory,  making  one  feel  the 
waste  far  more  than  can  greater  and  more  im- 
portant ruin. 

There  's  a  heap  of  stones  in  Picardy.  Men  tell 
us  that  a  village  stood  there  once,  and  we  still 
call  it  by  its  name.  Yet,  I  cannot  feel  the  waste, 
for  there  's  not  a  house  to  see,  nor  wall  for 
shelter  left ;  there  's  so  little  there  to  show. 

There  's  a  field  in  Picardy  where  crops  and 
flowers  grew.  Many  shells  have  ploughed  it, 
many  lives  have  watered  it.  All  is  desolation 
now,  yet  I  cannot  feel  its  past  nor  what  is 
wasted  there. 

There 's  a  grave  in  Picardy  where  lies  the  body 

180 


WASTE  181 

of  my  friend.  We  had  great  hopes  for  him,  and 
our  hopes  lie  buried  in  his  grave.  Yet,  there  's 
a  broken  tomb  in  Jewry  which  in  time  will 
heal  my  hurt,  for  I  know  that  God  will  use  my 
friend,  and  that  in  his  death  there  is  no  waste 
at  all. 

But  there  's  a  house  I  know  outside  a  market 
town,  and  that 's  the  place  that  rends  my  heart 
and  bids  me  weep  for  waste.  One  single  shell 
has  fallen  and  stripped  its  front  wall  clear.  All 
the  rooms  stand  perfect.  There  's  nothing  there 
of  beauty,  it 's  a  simple  bourgeois  home.  On 
the  walls  are  pictures,  in  friendly  homelike 
frames,  and  in  the  first  floor  bedroom,  which 
stands  open  to  the  wind,  some  one's  bed  stands 
ready,  neatly  made  and  turned.  A  book,  but 
little  dusty,  is  on  the  table  by  its  side,  and  three 
photographs  are  on  the  shelf  above  the  unlit  fire. 
A  rosary  and  crucifix  are  still  hanging  on  the  wall. 
Some  one  lived  and  loved  there  such  a  little 
while  ago.  It  has  a  garden,  nothing  great  or 
grand,  but  some  one  spent  his  evenings  there  and 
some  one  worked  there  well,  for  still  beside  the 
broken  wall  a  patient  rose  tree  grows,  and  still 
between  the  fallen  bricks  some  garden  flowers 


182  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

peep.  It  was  some  one's  resthouse,  it  was  some 
one's  pride  and  joy.  And  now,  it 's  all  a  ruin, 
and  some  one's  work  is  wasted  and  some  one's 
heart  is  sad.  And  that 's  the  place  that  rends 
my  heart  and  bids  me  weep  for  waste. 


FIFTEENTH    PAPER 

THE   SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER 
i.  7/s  Foundations 

THERE  is  no  character  which  has,  at  the  same 
time,  so  puzzled  and  amazed  the  world  as  that 
of  the  British  soldier.  That  strange  mixed 
character,  with  its  gaps  and  its  unevennesses, 
and  its  extraordinary  loveableness.  The  German 
has  learnt  that,  as  applied  to  it,  the  epithet 
contemptible  is  utterly  inappropriate.  The 
French  civilian  contemplates  it  with  affectionate 
bewilderment.  The  British  nation  watches  it 
with  grateful  and  almost  reverent  admiration. 
1  The  men  are  splendid,'  that  verdict  is  now 
almost  universally  endorsed,  and  it  is  not  my 
purpose  to  attempt  any  analysis  of  a  character 
which  has  become  familiar  to  us  all.  We  have 
all  of  us  seen  or  read  of  the  men's  unconquerable 
cheerfulness,  of  their  kindly  generosity  alike  to 
friend  and  foe,  of  their  endurance  for  long  periods 

183 


184  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

of  almost  intolerable  conditions,  in  dirt,  dis- 
comfort and  in  danger. 

My  object,  rather,  is  in  this  paper  to  try  to 
form  some  estimate  (so  far  as  it  is  possible  to 
generalise)  of  the  foundations  upon  which  it  rests, 
the  basis  upon  which  it  is  built ;  and  in  the  next 
to  consider  how  these  foundations  can  best  be 
secured  and  strengthened.  (The  metaphor  of 
building,  though  it  is  difficult  to  avoid,  is  not 
altogether  appropriate ;  because  this  character, 
which  we  are  considering,  is  not  the  result  of 
conscious  acts  or  deliberate  purpose,  but,  like 
Topsy,  has  'just  growed.') 

First,  it  must  be  frankly  acknowledged  by 
every  impartial  observer  that  this  character  of 
theirs  is  not  based  upon  any  conscious  allegiance 
to  the  revealed  religion  of  the  Incarnate  Christ. 
There  are,  of  course,  not  a  few,  who  would  admit 
that  they  owe  everything  to  their  religion  ; 
nor  must  the  influence  of  Christian  homes  and  of 
a  consciously  Christian  environment  be  under- 
rated. But,  from  a  generalisation,  which  is 
concerned  with  the  basis  of  the  character  of  the 
majority,  conscious  Christianity  must,  however 
regretfully,  be  left  almost  entirely  out  of  account. 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      185 

So  far  as  I  am  able  to  analyse  it,  it  would  seem 
that  the  character  which,  in  spite  of  its  gaps  and 
faults,  we  all  admire  to-day  is  based  in  the  main 
on  four  foundations :  (i)  A  belief  in  God ; 
(2)  devotion  to  a  cause  which  over-rides  self- 
interest  ;  (3)  the  discipline  of  the  Army ;  (4)  a 
strong  sense  of  comradeship. 

(i)  Some  sort  of  a  belief  in  God  seems  almost 
universal.  The  atheism  of  the  nineteenth  century 
was  a  spent  force  even  before  the  war,  and  for 
those  who,  in  these  latter  days,  have  gone  down 
into  the  deep  waters  of  tragedy  and  suffering, 
and  have  seen  there  the  wonders  of  the  Lord,  it 
has  now  no  meaning  at  all.  Agnosticism  I  have 
met,  but  not  very  often,  and  then  chiefly  among 
the  older  men  who  have  drunk  of  the  thin  wine 
of  certain  nineteenth-century  writers  still  further 
diluted  through  popular  magazines.  The  soldier's 
belief  in  God  is  often  expressed  in  language  which, 
intellectually,  is  fatalistic.  l  You  won't  get  hit 
unless  the  bullet  has  your  name  on  it/  '  Either 
your  number  is  up  or  it  isn't — so  don't  worry 
yourself.'  If  this  be  fatalism,  it  is  only  so  in  the 
purely  intellectual  sphere,  and  that  is  a  sphere 
in  which  the  ordinary  soldier  soon  gets  out  of  his 


186  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

depth.  Even  for  the  trained  intellect,  the  line 
between  fatalism  and  a  trustful  belief  in  an  all- 
protecting  Providence  is  not  easy  to  draw. 
Certainly  this  intellectual  fatalism,  if  fatalism 
it  be,  does  not  have  the  effects  upon  conduct 
which  logically  it  should.  It  gives  the  same 
calm  and  courage  that  comes  from  a  reasoned 
trust  in  the  Fatherly  providence  of  God,  but 
it  does  not  give  a  man  the  recklessness  of  the 
Dervish,  still  less  does  it  prevent  him  from 
making  superhuman  efforts  to  save  or  to 
help  his  friends  in  difficulty  or  in  danger. 
Both  these  things,  reasonable  precautions  for 
yourself,  and  the  attempt  to  help  others,  are, 
of  course,  logically  incompatible  with  a  real 
fatalism. 

Also  there  is  no  doubt  that,  in  the  hour  of 
danger  the  great  majority  of  men  pray  ;  it  is  not 
perhaps  a  very  high  type  of  prayer,  it  is  purely 
individual,  self-centred  and  inspired  by  fear. 
At  one  time,  especially  during  the  early  stages 
of  the  war,  we  heard  a  great  deal  about  religious 
revival  and  a  new  turning  to  prayer.  There  is 
a  story  that  during  a  lull  in  a  heavy  bombard- 
ment, a  man  emerged  from  a  dug-out  and  shouted 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      187 

inquiries  to  a  neighbouring  shelter  :  '  You  all 
right  in  there,  mate  ?  '  '  Yes — so  far,  but  some 

of  them  b shells  come  b close/  '  What 

have  you  been  doing  while  it  was  going  on  ?  ' 
'  Well,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  've  all  been  saying 
our  prayers.1  '  So  've  we — we  Ve  been  praying 
like  hell/ 

For  myself,  I  have  no  great  admiration  for  this 
emergency  religion  of  the  trenches.  It  is  based 
on  fear,  and  fear  is  a  rapidly  shifting  foundation. 
Such  a  religion,  strong  in  the  front  line,  is  apt  to 
grow  weaker  in  support,  almost  to  evaporate  in 
billets,  and  to  vanish  altogether  on  a  week's 
leave.  A  generation  ago,  preachers  used  to 
seek  to  cow  their  hearers  into  virtue  by  lurid 
emphasis  upon  the  terrors  of  hell.  Fear  may 
of  course  sometimes  be  the  first  motive  turning 
a  man  away  from  vice  and  towards  God, 
and  as  such,  it  has  its  value,  but  I  cannot 
believe  that  a  religion  in  which  fear  plays  a 
large  part  can  be  very  acceptable  to  God, 
whether  that  fear  be  the  fear  of  hell  or  the  fear 
of  shells. 

Hell  fire  and  shell  fire  are  alike  impossible  as 
the  sole  or  chief  foundation  for  the  religion  of 


188          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

Love.  But  still,  there  they  are,  these  emer- 
gency prayers,  these  petitions  of  the  trenches, 
and  for  what  they  are  worth  they  are  some 
evidence  of  the  men's  belief  in  God,  some 
proof  that  they  are  not  at  any  rate  consistent 
fatalists. 

It  is  all  a  strange  medley,  illogical,  English  ; 
if  you  judge  the  men  by  their  words  alone,  you 
would  be  bound  to  admit  that  the  majority  are 
purely  fatalistic  ;  but  if  you  form  your  opinion 
on  all  the  facts,  their  words,  their  acts,  and  also 
take  into  account  their  environment  and  up- 
bringing, you  are  justified  in  the  conclusion  that 
one  of  the  four  foundations  of  their  character  is 
a  very  real,  if  somewhat  vague  and  indefinite, 
belief  in  God. 

(2)  Devotion  to  a  cause  that  outweighs  and 
overrides  the  claims  of  self-interest.  This  I 
should  myself  put  down  as  the  main  cause  of  the 
great  uplift  that  has  been  given  to  men's  char- 
acters in  these  last  two  years  of  war.  It  is 
perhaps  difficult  for  men  of  leisure  and  education 
to  realise  how  inevitably  self-interest  is  bound  to 
dominate  the  lives  of  those  for  whom  the  struggle 
for  existence  is  a  daily  reality.  And  now  for 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      189 

two  years,  the  service  of  a  great  cause  has  been 
consciously  and  deliberately  the  dominating 
motive  of  these  men's  lives.  We  do  not  talk 
much  of  patriotism.  After  the  first  few  weeks 
we  even  abandoned  the  singing  of  patriotic 
songs.  The  cynic  tells  us  that  the  gods  gave 
to  man  the  gift  of  speech  that  he  might  have 
something  wherewith  to  disguise  his  thoughts. 
It  is  certainly  true  that  the  British  soldier  uses 
song  to  hide  his  feelings.  *  A  Little  Bit  of  Heaven ' 
is  the  most  popular  of  sentimental  songs  out  here, 
and  I  myself  heard  Ireland  twice  so  described 
in  the  very  week  during  which  Sinn  Fein  was 
making  it  a  very  passable  imitation  of  hell.  In 
peace  time,  when  patriotism  had  for  us  no  mean- 
ing, we  shouted  ourselves  hoarse  over  the  chorus 
of  Jingo  lays,  but  nov  that  England  has  for  us, 
at  last,  a  meaning,  we  sing  for  preference  such 
songs  as  '  Pack  up  your  troubles  in  your  old  kit 
bag,  and  smile,  smile,  smile/  or  else  songs  which 
have  in  them  no  sense  at  all.  We  do  not  sing  or 
speak  of  patriotism,  perhaps  we  do  not  think  much 
about  it,  certainly  we  do  not  personify  England 
as  the  Frenchman  with  ardent  devotion  personifies 
and  idealises  '  La  Patrie  '  ;  but  many  a  man  has 


190  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

a  real  sense  of  uplift  in  his  life  from  the  conscious- 
ness that  all  his  efforts  are  directed  not  to  his  own 
personal  advantage,  but  to  the  welfare  of  some- 
thing greater  than  himself,  the  progress  of  a  great 
cause — the  cause  of  England. 

(3)  The  third  really  important  basis  of  the 
soldier's  character  is  to  be  found  in  the  discipline 
of  the  Army.  Many  writers  have  commented 
upon  the  lasting  effects  which  must  result  from 
having  the  nation  for  a  few  years  in  arms  and 
under  discipline.  If  you  were  to  ask  a  man  of  a 
journalistic  habit  of  mind  about  soldiers  and 
their  religion,  he  would  probably  talk  to  you 
about  the  Angels  of  Mons — or  about  crucifixes 
untouched  in  ruined  houses  or  some  such  triviality, 
but  if  he  was  concerned  with  lasting  effects, 
rather  than  with  the  sensation  of  the  moment, 
he  would  probably  agree  that  the  most  vital 
moral  and  religious  effects  were  to  be  looked  for 
from  the  new  learnt  lessons  of  discipline  and 
order.  To  that  opinion  I  should  myself  assent, 
but  with  an  important  reservation.  Nothing  that 
has  occurred  has  in  any  way  shaken  the  marked 
individuality  of  the  British  character.  The 
ordinary  soldier  sees  the  necessity — for  war  pur- 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      191 

poses — of  the  whole  system  of  the  disciplinary 
hierarchy  ;  he  may  grumble  volubly  at  particular 
instances  and  particular  exponents  of  Army 
discipline,  but  he  sees  its  present  value.  At  the 
same  time  he  does  not  like  it.  There  is  no  com- 
plaint that  the  chaplain  hears  more  often  than 
that  there  are  too  many  bosses.  There  is  nothing 
that  makes  the  man  enlisted  '  for  the  duration  ' 
more  anxious  for  the  return  to  civil  life.  And 
so,  if  lasting  effects  are  to  be  looked  for  from  the 
discipline  of  the  Army,  it  will  not  be  because  the 
soldier  has  learnt  to  recognise  its  abiding  value 
and  importance.  Its  effects,  which  are  strong 
now,  and  must  surely  be  lasting,  will  be  for  the 
most  part  subconscious. 

(4)  The  fourth  foundation  of  the  soldier's 
character  is  what  perhaps  most  strikes  the  casual 
observer.  The  comradeship  and  the  brotherhood 
of  the  Army.  Here  again  it  is  difficult  for  those 
who  have  been  brought  up  in  the  atmosphere  of 
a  public  school  and  university  to  realise  how 
new  a  thing  this  is,  and  how  Ishmaelite  is  the 
life  of  a  working  boy  and  man  in  England.  The 
elementary  school,  with  some  honourable  excep- 
tions, provides  but  little  training  in  the  idea 


192  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

of  fellowship.  Tale-bearing  and  other  blankly 
individualistic  vices  are  still  encouraged  by 
many  school  teachers ;  and  even  such  training 
in  the  community  life  as  the  elementary  school 
provides  comes  to  an  end  when  the  boy  is 
fourteen.  He  is  launched  on  the  individual 
struggle  for  his  bread  and  butter  at  the  age  when 
his  more  fortunate  brother  is  just  beginning  the 
really  important  part  of  his  education  in  the  art 
of  fellowship,  his  initiation  into  the  meaning  of 
esprit  de  corps  and  the  public  school  spirit.  It  is 
only  in  his  trade  union  and  in  similar  societies 
that,  in  modern  England,  the  workman  has  had 
some  foretaste  of  those  ideals  of  fellowship  which 
in  the  Army  he  is  so  happily  learning  afresh.  Is 
it  some  heritage  from  man's  primaeval  curse 
that  even  fellowship — love  itself — can  only  be 
consolidated  by  common  hate  ?  The  welding 
force  in  the  trade  union  movement  is  found 
in  common  opposition  to  the  employing  class, 
and  at  home,  that  common  opposition  is  in  the 
foreground  of  men's  thoughts,  and  it  is  that  which 
most  binds  them  together.  Of  course  it  is  true 
that  it  is  common  opposition  to  the  Germans 
which  has,  quite  literally,  brought  men  together 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      193 

out  here.  But  in  this  case,  the  common  opposi- 
tion is  much  less  in  the  foreground.  There  is 
among  Englishmen,  whose  homes  have  not  been 
invaded  and  whose  women  have  not  been  wronged, 
little  or  no  sense  of  personal  injury.  It  is  these 
things  that  lend  bitterness  to  French  and  Belgian 
feelings,  just  as  it  is  the  sense  of  personal  injury 
that  stirs  the  mind  of  the  underpaid  workman 
or  the  over-rented  cottager.  Out  here,  our  oppo- 
sition to  a  common  foe,  though  it  governs  our 
every  act  and  orders  the  course  of  all  our  daily 
lives,  has  but  little  effect  upon  our  inner  minds, 
and  so  the  tree  of  fellowship  is  able  to  grow  and 
flourish  exceedingly.  The  men  realise  as  they 
never  have  realised  before  their  mutual  inter- 
dependence. Their  helpfulness  and  kindliness 
to  one  another  have  become  proverbial.  There 
is  a  real  brotherhood  too  between  officers  and 
men  which  must  surely  react  on  the  social  re- 
lationship of  the  future  ;  after  such  an  experience 
we  can  never  go  back  to  the  blind  class  divisions 
and  hatred  of  the  past.  The  boy  officer  takes 
an  almost  motherly  interest  and  pride  in  his 
platoon,  and  in  most  cases  the  men  return  his 
affection.  The  company  commander  and,  in  a 

N 


194  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

lesser  degree,  officers  of  higher  rank  share  with 
the  men  a  common  keenness  for  the  honour  of 
the  units  to  which  they  belong.  But  we  have 
advanced  a  further  stage  in  the  art  of  fellowship, 
for,  while  at  home  philosophers  and  thinkers 
have  been  wrangling  as  to  the  meaning  of  the 
divine  command  '  Love  your  enemies,'  out  here 
the  soldier  seems  in  practice,  if  not  in  theory, 
to  have  solved  the  problem.  If  you  were  to 
suggest  to  any  individual  soldier  that  he  loved 
Germans,  he  would  probably  get  extremely 
angry  and  abusive.  Certainly  his  love,  if  love  it 
be,  will  not  make  him  less  vigorous  a  fighter. 
In  a  '•  scrap  '  you  will  see  little  or  no  signs  of 
anything  of  the  sort ;  but  watch  him  an  hour 
afterwards  with  a  German  who  is  wounded  or  a 
prisoner,  and  you  will  see  a  kindness  and  a  con- 
siderateness  which  it  is  impossible  to  exaggerate. 
More  remarkable  even  than  his  treatment  of  the 
wounded  or  the  prisoners  is  the  soldier's  lack  of 
prejudice  against  those  who  are  still  fighting  and 
still  trying  to  kill  him.  He  shows  a  detached 
power  of  understanding  and  even  to  some  extent 
of  sympathising  with  '  Old  Fritz '  which  is 
surely  unique  in  the  annals  of  war. 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      195 

The  fellowship  of  the  Army  is  a  real  and  wonder- 
ful thing,  and  though,  in  a  sense,  it  ought  to  be 
described  as  a  result — a  fruit  of  character — yet, 
in  another  sense,  we  are,  I  think,  entitled  to 
claim  for  it  a  place  among  the  four  founda- 
tions from  which  has  grown  the  character  of 
the  British  soldier  as  we  know  and  love  him 
to-day. 


SIXTEENTH    PAPER 

THE   SOLDIER'S   CHARACTER 

ii.  How  are  these  Foundations  to  be  Preserved 
and  Strengthened  ? 

SUCH,  I  believe,  are  the  four  foundations  upon 
which  has  grown  the  character  of  the  British 
soldier  as  we  see  and  marvel  at  it  to-day.  Belief 
in  God.  The  sense  of  service  to  something 
greater  than  self.  The  discipline  of  the  Army. 
The  feeling  of  comradeship  and  brotherhood. 
Each  one  of  these  four  things  is,  to  some  extent, 
dependent  upon  the  special  circumstances  of  the 
times,  and  if  the  foundations  are  insecure  the 
character  which  has  grown  from  them  will  not 
be  strong  or  stable  enough  to  resist  the  inevit- 
able reaction  in  the  coming  days  of  peace. 
The  problem,  therefore,  which  confronts  us,  is 
how  are  these  foundations  to  be  made  secure 
and,  where  necessary,  strengthened.  To  the 
Christian  the  answer  is  clear.  We  have  long 

190 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      197 

ago  abandoned  the  method  of  evangelisation 
which  ignored  all  natural  virtues  and  sought  to 
begin  again  on  new  foundations.  In  religion, 
as  in  other  things,  the  educational  principle 
1  From  the  known  to  the  unknown  '  holds  sway. 
The  fullness  of  the  Christian  character  can  only 
be  reached  by  deepening  and  strengthening  that 
which  is  already  there,  and  so  we  want  to  take 
hold  of  all  that  there  is  of  natural  goodness  in 
men's  characters  and  show  them  how  in  Christ — 
and  only  in  Christ — is  to  be  sought  the  crown 
and  completeness  of  all  that  they  most  admire, 
(i)  Belief  in  God,  though  it  is  very  real,  is  in 
most  men's  minds  extraordinarily  vague  and  in- 
definite ;  it  is  dependent  too,  in  most  cases,  or 
at  any  rate  it  is  dependent  for  its  activity,  upon 
the  sense  of  need  and  danger.  How  is  that  belief 
to  be  maintained  as  an  active,  operative  influence 
in  men's  lives  when  all  obvious  danger  has  gone 
past  ?  For  my  own  part,  I  do  not  see  how  in 
this  bewildering,  tragic,  puzzling  world  of  ours 
such  a  belief  can  be  permanently  maintained 
unless  it  is  crystallised  and  made  definite  in 
Christ  as  the  revelation  of  the  character  of  God. 
1  He  that  hath  seen  Me,  hath  seen  the  Father.' 


198  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

Take,  for  instance,  the  sort  of  problems  that  the 
men  bring  up  when  they  have  so  far  overcome 
their  shyness  and  reserve  as  to  have  a  talk  with 
the  '  Padre/  I  am  not  thinking  of  formal  dis- 
cussions in  Church  huts  or  of  regular  debates, 
but  of  the  kind  of  talk  one  gets  watching  a  foot- 
ball match,  outside  the  canteen,  walking  round 
the  trenches,  or  sitting  beside  a  camp-fire  at 
night.  Here  are  some  samples  : 

(a)  l  Why  does  God  allow  all  this  suffering  to 
go  on  so  long,  when,  if  as  you  say  He  is  Almighty, 
He  could  stop  it  at  once  ;  above  all,  why  does 
He  allow  such  a  lot  of  people  who  aren't  to  blame 
to  suffer  most  ?  '  Such  is  the  question  which  is 
being  asked  by  thousands  of  people  in  the  ranks, 
and  at  home.  It  is  not  perhaps  surprising  that 
men,  thinking  perhaps  for  the  first  time,  advance 
such  questions  as  though  they  were  a  new 
problem  raised  by  the  war.  Death  and  bereave- 
ment on  a  vast  scale  have  brought  before  even 
the  dullest  and  most  limited  imaginations  the 
age-long  problem  of  suffering,  which  has  exercised 
thought  since  thought  began.  You  cannot  per- 
haps expect  men  to  see  that,  however  different 
it  be  in  the  realm  of  imagination,  intellectually 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      199 

it  in  no  way  differs  from  the  problem  which  is 
raised  when  one  small  child  is  run  over  in  the 
streets  of  London.  How  are  such  questions  to 
be  effectually  answered  ? 

Disquisitions  upon  free  will,  and  the  argument 
that  the  failure  is  not  the  failure  of  God  or  of 
Christianity,  but  due  to  man's  misuse  of  God's 
gifts  may  possibly  convince  the  head,  but  they 
do  not  satisfy.  You  may  point  out  that  the 
world  which  God  made  is  organised  and  governed 
as  though  God  did  not  exist ;  that  international 
affairs  are  conducted  with  no  reference  at  all  to 
His  revealed  will,  that  our  social  relationships 
are  little  in  accordance  with  His  teaching,  that 
our  private  lives  are  very  far  from  reaching  to 
His  standard.  You  may  argue  that  the  present 
world  disaster  is  proof  of  the  failure  of  all  else 
but  God,  but  that  in  man  which  is  more  important 
than  his  head  will  only  be  satisfied  if  you  turn 
his  attention  not  to  argument  and  philosophy, 
but  to  the  plain  record  of  the  Gospel  story.  The 
world  suffers,  but  God  is  no  absent  spectator — 
above,  beyond,  serene,  but  in  it,  of  it,  down  in 
the  depths  of  its  suffering  and  its  woe.  God 
Himself  upon  the  Cross. 


200          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

(b)  Consider  another  question  which  is  fre- 
quently discussed  in  billets  or  on  country  walks 
behind  the  lines.    '  How  can  God  hear  our  prayers 
when   Germans  and  Austrians  are  praying  to 
Him  for  their  own  victory  ?     It  is  the  same  God/ 
4  What  is  the  use  of  praying  for  the  victory  of 
what  we  believe  to  be  right  when  our  enemies 
are  just  as  convinced  of  the  Tightness  of  their 
cause,  and  are  praying  to  the  same  God  for  its 
success  ? '      That  is  a  question  with  which,  in 
one  form  or  another,  one  is  constantly  faced,  and 
apart  from  Revelation,  I  cannot  see  that  there 
can  be  any  satisfactory  answer.     If  the  will  of 
God  is  merely  a  matter  of  opinion,  no  single 
individual  can  have  great  confidence  that  his 
own   prayers   are   more   worth   while   than   the 
prayers  of  some  one  else  who  is  offering  them 
with  a  precisely  contrary  intent.     But  for  those 
who  believe  in  Christianity,  the  will  of  God  is  no 
longer  a  matter  of  mere  guesswork,  and  it  is  in 
no  way  dependent  upon  our  imaginings.     The 
nature  and  character  of  God  has  been  spread 
out  before  us.     In  Christ,  God  is  revealed  as  a 
person  with  a  will  of  His  own,  a  will  that  is  ascer- 
tainable — a  will  that  is  like  Christ's  will.     It  does 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      201 

not  matter  that  hostile  nations  use  to  Him  the 
same  words  and  apply  to  Him  the  same  titles. 
Prayer,  however  worded,  however  addressed,  is 
not  prayer  in  the  name  of  Christ  unless  it  is  a 
laying  of  our  wills  in  line  with  God's  will,  as  that 
will  has  been  revealed  to  us  in  Christ.  Believing 
in  the  justice  of  the  cause  in  which  we  fight, 
convinced  that  its  triumph  is  in  accordance  with 
His  will,  the  fact  that  others  pray  to  Him  for  its 
defeat  will  disturb  us  not  at  all.  Our  task  it  is 
to  keep  ourselves  in  line  with  what  we  believe 
to  be  His  purpose  and  His  will,  and  therewith  to 
be  content. 

(c)  Of  comparatively  little  importance — but 
perhaps  worth  noticing — are  the  larger  numbers 
of  idle  and  sometimes  degrading  superstitions 
which  men  can  hold  side  by  side  with  a  vague 
belief  in  God.  How  are  these  to  be  combated  ? 
The  god  of  a  man's  imaginings  may  be  affected 
by  trivial  things  or  he  may  be  but  one  of  many 
gods,  powerless  to  control  the  vagaries  of  the 
lord  of  chance.  But  once  we  realise  that  the 
character  of  the  Almighty  is  ascertainable,  if 
once  we  have  a  clear  grasp  of  the  truth  that  he 
that  hath  seen  Christ  hath  seen  the  Father,  that 


202  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

God  is  like  Christ,  we  shall  understand  that  He 
who,  in  character,  is  like  Christ  will  not  punish 
a  man  for  sitting  down  thirteen  to  his  dinner  or 
for  being  the  third  to  light  his  fag  from  the  same 
match.  It  is  fashionable  in  these  days  to  decry 
theology,  but  a  sound  theology  among  other 
advantages  has  the  great  merit  of  being 
incompatible  with  superstition.  The  super- 
stitious man  must  be  either  a  polytheist  or 
a  devil  worshipper,  or,  more  probably,  just  a 
fool. 

(d)  To  turn  to  matters  more  important, 
though  a  mere  vague  belief  in  God  may  and  often 
does  enable  a  man  to  face  his  own  death  bravely, 
and  to  stand  unmoved  amid  scenes  of  carnage 
and  bloodshed,  it  will  not  help  him  much  by 
the  graveside  of  those  whom  he  really  loves.  I 
remember  well  in  the  ward  of  a  London  hospital 
talking  to  a  soldier  who  was  dirty  and  travel- 
stained,  his  clothes  still  caked  with  the  mud  of 
Flanders.  He  had  been  called  by  telegram  to 
the  bedside  of  his  little  boy  who  lay  dying. 
*  Only  yesterday/  he  told  me  there  in  the  peace 
of  London,  '  only  yesterday  my  mate  was  blown 
to  pieces  alongside  of  me  ;  nearly  every  day  I 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      203 

have  seen  men  killed  and  I  didn't  mind,  I  got 
sort  of  used  to  it,  though  sometimes  I  've  seen 
'em  fall  by  dozens  from  machine-gun  fire — and 
all  good  pals  of  mine  too,  but  when  I  got  this 
telegram  about  my  little  Harry  it  fair  broke  me.' 
He  looked,  what  he  said  he  was,  a  broken  man, 
and  when,  a  few  hours  afterwards,  the  child  died, 
what  could  I  say  to  him  ?  What  use  to  speak 
to  him  of  theories  of  survival,  of  hopes  and 
dreams  ?  The  death  of  his  child  was  a  fact — 
cold  and  grim.  Theories  are  but  flimsy  things 
with  which  to  face  hard  facts.  In  face  of  such 
a  fact — a  man's  faith,  his  belief  in  God  will  not 
stand  firm  unless  it  be  supported  by  that  other 
and  stronger  fact,  the  actual,  literal  resurrection 
of  the  Man  Christ  Jesus.  Academic  theologians 
live  often  in  a  world  of  theory  ;  to  them  no 
doubt  their  theories  seem  real  things,  and  so  they 
will  not  realise  that  men  who  are  unaccustomed 
to  speculation  and  to  theories  but  who  are  con- 
stantly up  against  the  hard  facts  of  daily  life, 
can  only  be  helped  by  facts.  And  it  is  fact — 
which  the  simple  straightforward  Gospel  of  the 
Resurrection  offers  to  the  bereaved  and  to  the 
broken-hearted.  It  is  that  fact  which  more  than 


204          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

anything  else  will  help  such  men  to  maintain 
and  keep  alive  their  belief  in  God. 

Such  are  some  of  the  problems  and  difficulties 
which  tend  to  undermine  in  men  their  belief  in 
God.  If  that  belief  be  one  of  the  four  essential 
foundations  of  the  character  which  we  all  wish 
to  preserve  and  strengthen,  we  must  find  some 
means  by  which  that  belief  can  be  maintained 
against  all  such  undermining.  To  us  Christians 
it  seems  that  this  can  best  be  done  by  crystallising 
their  vague  belief  in  a  power  above  them  into  a 
precise  and  definite  belief  in  Christ  revealed  as 
God  Incarnate. 

(2)  As  the  second  main  foundation  of  the 
soldier's  character  I  have  claimed  the  conviction 
that  they  are  serving  a  cause,  a  something 
greater  than  themselves.  The  cause  of  England, 
of  civilisation,  of  freedom,  or  as  the  soldier,  with 
his  strong  instinct  for  immediate  present  realities, 
would  probably  put  it,  the  cause  of  beating  the 
Boche.  How,  when  the  victory  has  been  won 
and  that  cause  has  no  longer  any  obvious  claim 
upon  his  services,  how  is  the  uplifting  sense  of 
living  for  something  greater  than  self-interest  to 
be  lastingly  maintained  ? 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      205 

What  cause  can  be  more  inspiring  and  en- 
nobling than  the  cause  of  Christ  ?  We  have  got 
to  get  rid  of  the  idea  of  religion  as  concerned  only 
or  primarily  with  a  selfish  individual  salvation, 
as  a  short  cut  to  heaven,  or  a  fire  insurance  against 
hell.  All  the  experience  of  recent  years  should 
have  impressed  upon  us  the  vital  importance  of 
shifting  the  emphasis  of  our  teaching  from  the 
individual  to  the  corporate.  The  strength  of 
fellowship  movements  in  the  world  of  labour,  the 
proved  failure  of  individualistic  sectarianism, 
the  unexpected  power  (even  in  the  modern 
commercially-linked-up  world)  of  the  claim  of 
nationality,  alike  tend  to  show  that  the  call  to 
serve  a  corporate  ideal  evokes  all  that  is  best  in 
those  to  whom  it  is  made.  We  have  got  to  get 
away  from  the  individualistic  and  characteristi- 
cally British  conception  of  religion  to  the  primi- 
tive catholic  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ,  who  before 
all  things  was  One  who  came  to  found  a  society, 
a  kingdom.  His  sacraments  and  His  verbal 
teaching  are  alike  essentially  social.  Love  and 
service  of  the  brethren  come  first,  individual 
salvation  is  attainable  only  in  and  through  such 
love  and  service.  To  be  a  Christian  means  to  be 


206  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

a  worker  for  the  greatest  of  all  causes,  the  cause 
of  Christ  and  the  coming  of  His  Kingdom.  It 
is  the  greatest  of  all  causes  and  also  the  most 
enduring,  for  its  claims  upon  its  servants  cannot 
cease  till  the  Lord's  prayer  is  answered  and  His 
Kingdom  conies  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven,  till 
the  kingdoms  of  this  world  have  become  the 
Kingdom  of  our  Lord  and  of  His  Christ.  Great 
causes  do  not,  however,  as  a  rule  appeal  strongly 
to  men's  hearts  unless  with  loyalty  to  a  cause 
there  is  coupled  personal  devotion  to  a  leader. 
Even  the  best  of  causes  lacks  magnetic  power 
unless  associated  with  personality.  History 
and  politics  teach  the  same  lesson.  Dynastic 
quarrels  have  often  plunged  the  world  in  sorrow, 
but  at  the  same  time  they  have  called  out  in  men 
some  of  the  noblest  qualities  of  chivalry  and 
devotion  ;  and  even  in  modern  politics  nearly 
every  great  cause  has  been  indestructibly  associ- 
ated with  the  name  of  its  champion  and  leader. 
In  recent  history  there  has  been  no  greater, 
nor  more  inspiring  heroism  than  that  displayed 
by  the  men  of  the  Italian  risings  and  wars  of 
liberation.  They  had  a  great  cause — the  freeing 
and  reuniting  of  a  historic  nation,  long  enslaved 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      207 

and  long  dismembered,  but  the  allegiance  of  the 
men  of  Italy  to  that  great  cause  was  undoubtedly 
held  firm  by  their  personal  devotion  to  a  few 
leaders,  men  of  outstanding  personality,  Mazzini, 
Cavour,  Garibaldi,  and  Victor  Emmanuel  the 
King. 

This  present  war  has  been  on  so  vast  a  scale 
that  it  has  been  almost  too  big  for  loyalties  such 
as  this  ;  but  even  so,  the  name  of  Lord  Kitchener 
has  been  a  name  of  magic  and  at  any  rate  to  the 
new  armies  has  supplied  something  of  the  force 
which  comes  from  personal  devotion  ;  and  those 
who  witnessed  the  reception  given  to  the  King, 
when  he  visited  the  troops  in  Picardy,  were 
deeply  impressed  with  the  exuberant  display  of 
personal  loyalty.  But  for  the  most  part  in  this 
war,  this  necessary  element  has  been  supplied  in 
closer  and  more  intimate  ways.  The  battalion 
commanders,  the  company  officers,  and,  most 
intimately  of  all,  the  platoon  leaders,  have  in 
countless  cases  been  able  to  win  from  their  men 
a  whole-hearted  personal  devotion  ;  a  blend  of 
affection  and  of  confidence.  Whether  it  be  on 
a  large  or  small  scale,  it  is  personality  that 
counts,  it  is  personality  that  in  most  men 


208  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

inspires  an  allegiance  far  stronger  than  they  would 
accord  to  a  mere  abstract  cause.  The  cause  of 
Belgium  moved  us  all,  but  it  was  the  presence  of 
the  homeless  Belgians  in  our  midst  that  really 
affected  us.  In  almost  the  last  essay  that  he 
wrote,  published  in  the  Times  Literary  Supple- 
ment after  his  death,  Henry  James  told  us  how 
one  individual  Belgian  woman  walking  sadly 
down  the  main  street  of  Rye  in  Sussex,  became 
to  him  the  symbol  of  all  the  sorrow  of  the  war, 
and  inspired  him  to  the  heroic  labours  of  that 
last  year  of  his  life.  The  care  of  the  wounded  is 
a  cause  and  a  responsibility  of  national  obliga- 
tion, but  it  is  the  sight  in  our  streets  of  the 
maimed  men  in  blue  that  moves  men's  hearts. 

If  this  personal  element  is  essential  in  political 
and  military  causes  such  as  these,  we  must  not 
leave  it  out  when  appealing  to  men  for  service 
in  the  greater  cause.  Here  the  Christian  Church 
should  have  no  difficulty,  for  it  is  of  the  essence 
of  her  message  that  Christianity  involves  personal 
allegiance  to  a  leader.  In  so  great  a  cause  Christ 
is  an  ideal  leader,  inspiring  confidence  by  His 
victories  over  sin  and  death  :  '  Be  of  good  cheer, 
I  have  overcome  the  world ' :  evoking  love  by  His 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      209 

sorrows  and  His  suffering  :  '  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up, 
will  draw  all  Men  unto  me.'  The  appeal  of  the 
wounded  men  who  have  suffered  in  the  great 
cause  of  England  is  irresistible,  because  it  is  the 
appeal  of  the  actual  living  men  in  blue  visible 
in  our  streets.  The  appeal  of  the  leader  in  the 
Eternal  Cause  is  the  appeal  of  one  who  was 
wounded  on  the  battlefield  of  Calvary  and  who, 
though  invisible,  still  lives  and,  in  the  suffer- 
ings of  His  followers,  suffers  still. 

But  it  is  not  enough  that  in  the  Captain  of  our 
Salvation  we  have  the  ideal  leader  ;  something  of 
the  personal  element  must  be  supplied  by  those 
whom  He  has  commissioned  to  be  officers  in  His 
cause.  In  English  parochial  life  the  clergy  are, 
as  a  rule,  leaders  in  organisation  and  in  externals  ; 
but  on  deeper  levels  there  is  tragic  truth  in  the 
caricature  which  always  depicts  the  parson  as 
the  soul  of  conservative  convention.  We  want 
more  of  the  spirit  of  enterprise  and  of  leadership 
in  the  things  of  the  mind.  Men  look  for  it  and 
expect  it.  Army  life  has  accustomed  them,  more 
than  ever  before,  to  the  ideas  of  leadership,  and 
it  is  to  the  clergy  that  in  the  coming  years 
we  must  look  for  a  spirit  of  adventure  which 

o 


210          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

hitherto  has  been  so  lacking  in  their  ranks.  But 
a  leader  must  be  one  who  inspires  confidence,  and 
that  means  that  he  must  be  a  man  of  thought 
and  of  independence — qualities  which  are  rare  in 
isolation,  and  in  conjunction  still  more  difficult 
to  find.  He  must  also  be  one  who  inspires  love — 
and  it  is  only  of  self-sacrifice  that  love  is  born. 

Above  all,  if  this  sense  of  service  to  a  cause  and 
to  leaders,  which  is  so  potent  a  force  in  men's 
characters  to-day,  is  to  be  maintained  and  trans- 
ferred to  the  greater  cause,  we  have  got  to  give 
up  entirely  the  mean  habit  of  appealing  to  selfish 
motives.  Politicians  win  support  by  the  promises 
which  they  make.  Heroes  secure  allegiance  by 
their  appeal  for  service.  Peddling  plans  may 
be  pushed  forward  by  lavish  rewards.  Great 
causes  can  be  advanced  only  by  great  sacrifices. 
Little  men  are  won  by  bribes  ;  what  is  best  in 
the  best  of  men  is  brought  out  only  by  a  great 
claim.  Christianity  professes  to  be  the  religion 
of  the  Cross,  of  utter  unselfishness.  Assent  to  it 
is  asked,  all  too  often,  from  motives  of  fear  or 
for  the  sake  of  an  individual  salvation  in  the 
next  world.  For  my  own  part  I  cannot  see  that 
selfishness  is  any  the  less  selfish  because  its 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      211 

profits  are  transferred  from  the  balance  of  this 
world  to  the  pay  sheet  of  the  world  to  come. 
The  Christian  preacher  seeking  to  win  men  for 
His  Master  may  by  promises  of  the  security  of 
heaven  attract  the  adhesion  of  the  timid.  If  he 
wishes  to  enlist  the  strong  and  the  adventurous 
in  the  great  cause  there  is  no  model  that  would 
be  more  likely  to  be  effective  than  the  historic 
appeal  of  Garibaldi  to  the  men  of  Rome : 

'  Fortune  who  betrays  us  to-day  will  smile  on 
us  to-morrow.  I  am  going  out  from  Rome. 
Let  those  who  wish  to  continue  the  war  against 
the  stranger  come  with  me.  I  offer  neither  pay, 
nor  quarters,  nor  provisions.  I  offer  hunger, 
thirst,  forced  marches,  battles,  and  death.  Let 
him  who  loves  his  country  in  his  heart  and  not 
with  his  lips  only  follow  me/ 

(3)  It  is  when  we  come  to  face  the  third  main 
foundation  of  the  soldier's  character — the  dis- 
cipline of  the  Army — that  we  are  faced  with  the 
most  difficult  problem  for  the  future.  There 
can,  I  think,  be  no  doubt  of  the  value  that  has 
accrued  to  men  through  their  temporary  sub- 
mission to  a  rigid  discipline.  At  the  same  time 


212          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

probably  every  one  who  has  had  at  all  intimate 
relations  with  our  troops  in  France  would  agree 
that  discipline  is  as  little  liked  as  ever.  It  is 
quite  certain  that  men  will  not,  as  a  result  of 
what  they  have  learnt  here  in  war,  submit  gladly 
to  some  similar  authority  in  peace  time  at  home.1 
Quite  apart  from  the  inevitable  temporary 
reaction  (a  reaction  which  may  well  set  towards 
something  beyond  liberty),  it  is  certain  that  the 
engrained  English  desire  for  freedom  has  received 
no  set-back,  nor  even  check.  The  soldier's  ex- 
perience of  the  sergeant  and  the  corporal  has 
not  increased  his  love  for  the  inspector  or  the 
supervisor.  What  he  has  learnt  of  the  value  of 
discipline  may  possibly  affect  his  upbringing  of 
his  family.  We  shall  perhaps  hear  less  of 
children  of  twelve  years  who  are  beyond  their 
parents'  control.  The  soldier  will  visit  on  his  son 
— to  his  son's  great  gain — what  he  has  himself 
suffered  from  the  sergeant,  but,  for  himself,  he 
will  never  willingly  accept  an  external  authority 
similar  in  kind  to  that  of  the  military  hierarchy. 
There  is  no  danger  at  all  that  we  shall  break 
German  militarism  in  war,  only  to  succumb  to  it 

1  See  this  point  more  fully  discussed  in  the  Fourth  Paper. 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      213 

ourselves  in  peace.  Freedom  is  the  very  object 
of  the  war,  but  to  attain  it  we  have  had  to  sub- 
mit to  large  curtailments  of  our  liberty.  Laws 
have  been  passed  by  acclamation,  which,  a  little 
while  ago,  would  have  aroused  the  most  pas- 
sionate opposition.  To  the  Christian  the  para- 
dox will  cause  no  surprise.  It  is  the  law  of 
sacrifice  in  working.  It  is  the  surrender  of  the 
less  for  the  sake  of  the  greater,  of  the  present  for 
the  enduring.  It  is  the  loss  of  temporary  freedom 
for  the  sake  of  the  larger  liberty  of  the  future. 
But  quite  apart  from  its  immediate  necessity, 
there  is,  of  course,  in  discipline  a  real  character 
value.  Many  a  ragged  life  has  been  stiffened  ; 
many  a  man  and  many  a  woman  has  become 
both  happier  and  better  in  these  years  of  war. 
How  can  this  thing  of  value  be  preserved  in  the 
coming  years  of  peace  ?  It  is  certain  that  except 
for  immediate  and  temporary  ends,  men  will  not 
again  place  themselves  under  the  authority  of 
another,  will  not  again  surrender  their  freedom. 
And  yet,  to  reach  his  best,  a  man  must  submit 
to  discipline.  How  can  discipline  and  freedom, 
authority  and  liberty  be  harmonised  ?  Here 
surely  is  a  great  opportunity  for  the  Church  of 


214          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

Christ :  for  Christ  alone  holds  the  key.  The 
Christian  is  free  and  royal,  yet  before  all  things 
he  is  a  man  under  authority.  He  is  '  bought  with 
a  price ' — the  slave  of  his  Lord.  S.  James,  who 
is  content  at  the  opening  of  his  Epistle  to  describe 
himself  as  the  bond-servant  of  Jesus  Christ, 
speaks  more  than  once  of  a  royal  law,  a  law  of 
liberty.  The  Christian  is  a  servant,  yet  free 
and  royal,  because  his  service  is  voluntary  and 
offered  in  the  spirit  of  the  Royal  Son  of  Man, 
who  Himself  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto 
but  to  minister.  He  is  under  authority,  but  it  is 
the  authority  of  Him  in  whose  service  is  perfect 
freedom,  of  Him  '  cui  servire  regnare  est.'  The 
Christian  law  is  law,  binding  and  authoritative, 
but  it  is  a  royal  law  because  its  authority  is 
within  the  self  and  in  the  sphere  of  conscience. 
It  is  law,  strict  and  all  embracing,  but  it  is  a  law 
of  liberty,  because  it  is  accepted  of  a  man's  own 
free  choice,  a  choice  which  is  truly  free,  not  like 
that  of  the  voluntary  soldier,  once  made  and 
irrevocable,  but  a  choice  daily  and  hourly 
renewed. 

Freedom  and  discipline  are  both  necessary  to 
human   greatness.     Freedom   we   have   for   the 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      215 

time  being  surrendered,  but  freedom  we  shall 
inevitably  regain.  The  love  of  it  is  too  deeply 
engrained  in  the  English  nature,  the  price  that 
has  been  paid  for  it  is  too  heavy,  for  the  sur- 
render to  be  permanent.  Discipline  we  have 
for  the  time  being  attained,  but  with  equal  cer- 
tainty we  shall  lose  it  again  unless  we  reach  it 
in  a  new  form,  a  form  which  is  independent  of 
the  drill  sergeant  or  of  any  external  authority, 
a  form  with  which  only  an  inner  and  spiritual 
religion  can  provide  us.1 

(4)  But  what  of  the  fellowship  which  plays 
so  large  a  part  in  Army  life,  and  which  is  so 
important  among  the  foundation  things  of  the 
soldier's  character  ?  How  can  this  be  main- 
tained in  the  coming  days  of  peace  ?  Must  we 
return  to  the  selfish  individualism  of  the  past  ? 
Is  there  anything  which  will  help  us  to  carry  over 

1  I  have  spoken  here  of  the  discipline  which  is  the  result  of 
submission  of  the  individual  will,  to  the  authority  of  Christ. 
Further  questions  as  to  the  discipline  and  authority  of  Christ's 
Church  are  inevitably  involved.  This  is  not  the  type  of  book  in 
which  to  consider  such  questions,  but  obviously,  if  the  Church  of 
England  is  to  use  her  opportunity,  she  must  make  clearer  than 
she  has  yet  done  the  extent  and  limits  of  her  claim  to  authority^ 
and  equally,  if  men  are  to  attain  that  real  freedom  which  can 
only  be  reached  through  discipline,  they  must  be  prepared  to 
acknowledge  and  obey  some  form  of  Church  authority. 


216  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

into  civil  life  the  lessons  that  we  have  learnt  here 
in  the  Army  ?  What  bond  is  there  strong  enough 
to  give  that  uniting  force  which  the  regiment 
and  the  common  cause  have  hitherto  supplied  ? 

An  answer  to  these  questions  is  not  easy,  and 
yet  to  find  one  is  of  vital  importance,  for,  un- 
doubtedly, this  brotherhood,  this  comradeship 
of  the  Army  has  been  an  immensely  important 
factor,  and  is  responsible  for  much  that  is  of  the 
utmost  value.  To  live  in  fellowship  one  with 
another  is  no  easy  thing.  It  is  a  high  and 
difficult  art.  Our  education  in  it  proceeds  nor- 
mally in  ever  expanding  circles.  First  the  baby 
has  to  learn  that  its  primordial  instincts  have 
to  be  satisfied  with  some  reference  to  the  con- 
venience of  other  people.  Then  the  child  has 
to  learn  the  give  and  take  of  family  life.  Then 
comes  the  wider  world  of  school.  The  fact  that 
the  only  child  takes  longer  to  settle  down  in 
school  surroundings  is  due,  of  course,  to  the  fact 
that  he  has  not  had  the  same  opportunities  of 
learning  the  earlier  lesson.  But  our  education 
in  the  art  of  fellowship  becomes  higher  grade, 
not  only  by  reason  of  the  increased  numbers  with 
whom  we  are  brought  into  contact,  but  also 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      217 

when  we  come  into  relationship  with  people  of 
different  upbringing,  outlook,  and  environment. 
The  young  man  at  the  university  may  seem  to 
have  a  genius  for  friendship  and  fellowship,  but 
he  has  yet  to  learn  the  harder  lesson  of  how  to 
live  in  fellowship  with  men  of  a  different  class 
and  of  a  wholly  different  standpoint.  The  young 
workman  may  be  a  zealous  member  of  his 
friendly  society  and  his  union,  but  may  yet  be 
very  far  from  having  mastered  the  harder  task 
of  how  to  live  in  fellowship  with  men  of  the 
employing  class.  Out  here,  in  France,  we  have 
been  learning  fellowship  in  a  very  large  school 
and  among  men  of  all  types.  Not  only  in  the 
ranks,  but  in  officers'  messes  men  of  very  widely 
differing  education  and  upbringing  have  been 
brought  much  together.  Not  only  have  we  in 
the  Army  been  learning,  but  at  home  people  have 
been  brought  nearer  to  each  other  than  ever 
before.  Shall  we  have  profited  by  our  training  ? 
Are  we  ready  for  a  yet  more  advanced  lesson  in 
this  noblest  of  all  arts,  the  art  of  fellowship  ? 
We  want  something  that  is  wider  than  the 
comradeship  of  the  Army,  wider  than  the  brother- 
hood of  the  nation.  Where  is  the  catholic  ideal 


218  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

to  be  found — where  is  the  dream  of  a  universal 
brotherhood  to  be  achieved  ?  The  Church  of 
Christ  should  supply  us  with  what  we  need,  but 
it  is  just  here  (let  us  humbly  confess  it)  that  we 
have  most  conspicuously  failed.  First  there  are 
the  divisions  between  the  great  branches  of  the 
Church.  Here  in  a  little  village  in  Picardy, 
where  I  am  writing  these  lines,  an  allied  nation 
has  put  everything  at  our  disposal.  Houses, 
fields,  barns,  are  ours  for  the  asking.  Yesterday 
I  had  arranged  in  an  open  field  for  a  service  of 
commemoration  for  those  who  had  given  their 
lives  in  the  recent  fighting.  Yesterday  it  rained, 
but  I  could  not  have  the  use  of  the  village  church, 
though  it  was  unoccupied  and  its  cure  had  gone 
to  the  wars.  That  alone  was  denied  to  me.  The 
pity  of  it,  the  pity  and  the  shame  of  it !  And 
this  is  the  society  whose  ambition  is  to  unite  the 
world.  But  there  is  a  lack  of  fellowship  every- 
where, not  only  between  the  various  branches 
of  the  One  Society.  Within  our  own  English 
Church,  the  various  schools  of  thought  quarrel 
and  protest,  and  even  within  the  limits  of  single 
congregations  there  are  squabbles,  cliques,  and 
lack  of  friendliness.  Here  is  the  supreme  need 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      219 

of  repentance  and  reform.  There  is  much  talk 
of  alterations  in  our  Prayer  Book,  of  brightening 
our  services,  and  of  Church  reform  :  with  such 
proposals  I  am  myself  in  entire  sympathy,  but 
there  is  a  very  real  danger  lest  our  reforming  zeal 
should  be  directed  overmuch  to  things  such  as 
these,  which  are,  after  all,  but  superficial  remedies. 
What  will  all  these  things  avail,  if  men  see  that 
the  Church  of  Christ  shows  to  them  less,  and  not 
more  of  brotherhood  than  they  can  see  in  other 
societies  outside  her  borders  ?  Men  will  not 
turn  to  the  organised  Church  of  Christ  while, 
in  her  life,  she  gives  the  lie  to  this  essential 
principle  of  her  being.  But  while  our  new 
grasp  of  the  ideal  of  fellowship  fills  us  churchmen 
with  bitterness  and  shame  for  the  past  and  also 
for  the  present,  at  the  same  time  it  gives  us  ground 
for  the  highest  hopes  for  the  future.  We  want 
fellowship,  we  see  its  value,  we  want  a  fellowship 
strong  enough  to  overcome  the  dividing  barriers 
of  sex  and  class  and  nationality,  and  it  is  only  in  a 
common  allegiance  to  the  Universal  Christ,  the 
One  Master  of  us  all  that  we  can  hope  to  find  it. 
In  Him  alone  is  there  any  hope  of  a  united  world. 
We  want  fellowship — and  to-day  many  of  us  are 


220  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

realising  with  a  terrible  intensity  that  we  want 
the  widest  possible  fellowship,  one  which  is  not 
bounded  by  the  confines  of  this  earth  ;  we  want 
fellowship  with  the  hundreds  who  have  gone  on 
in  the  fullness  of  their  vigour.  Here  again,  the 
Church  and  the  Church  alone,  can  supply  the 
need.  Her  doctrines  of  the  endless  life  and  of 
the  Communion  of  Saints  assure  the  bereaved 
of  our  common  membership  in  the  one  Eternal 
Christ,  their  Master  there  as  He  is  ours  here. 

The  comradeship  of  the  Army,  that  is  one  of 
the  greatest,  perhaps  the  greatest  force  in  the 
formation  of  the  character  of  our  soldiers,  and 
again  it  is  only  in  Christ  that  this  new-found 
sense  of  fellowship  can  be  maintained  and  com- 
pleted. Some  few  are  realising  this  already,  as, 
for  instance,  the  private  soldier,  who,  in  a  letter 
home  wrote  these  words :  '  Out  here,'  he  wrote, 
'  we  have  found  God,  for  we  have  given  up  our 
narrow  self-centred  lives,  and  found  love  for  one 
another,  and  God  is  Love/  It  is  along  the  lines 
of  fellowship  that  I  am  myself  most  hopeful 
of  religious  growth.  S.  John's  Epistle  seems 
charged  with  new  meaning  out  here,  and  we  are 
understanding  afresh  the  meaning  of  his  teaching 


THE  SOLDIER'S  CHARACTER      221 

that  love  towards  God  can  only  be  shown  by 
love  towards  the  brethren.  The  letter  which  I 
have  just  quoted  shows  that  some  men  are 
seeing  a  definite  religious  value  in  the  companion- 
ship and  brotherhood  of  their  life  in  the  Army. 
Such  a  letter  is  perhaps  not  typical,  and  it  conies 
from  a  man  more  thoughtful  than  most — but 
there  is  much  evidence  of  the  desire  to  find  re- 
ligious expression  for  the  wider  fellowship.  No 
services  are  more  willingly  attended,  none  make 
a  deeper  impression  than  the  services  of  com- 
memoration which  nearly  all  chaplains  try  to 
arrange  at  the  first  available  moment  after  their 
battalion  or  brigade  has  been  in  action.  Even 
those  who  would  not  ordinarily  regard  themselves 
as  religious  and  who  do  not  usually  attend  volun- 
tary services,  seem  then  to  feel  the  need  of  a 
religious  expression  for  the  sentiments  of  regret, 
affection,  and  respect  which  can  find  satisfaction 

in  no  other  outlet. 

•  ••••• 

What  then  are  the  prospects  for  the  future 
religion  of  England  ?  If  we  are  to  judge  by  the 
churchgoing  and  professed  Christianity  of  the 
Army,  none  but  a  blind  and  wilful  optimist  can 


222          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

deny  that  the  prospects  are  gloomy  in  the 
extreme.  If,  however,  we  shift  our  emphasis  a 
little,  and  try  to  leave  behind  any  preconceived 
ideas,  we  see  in  the  manhood  of  England1  a 
character  which  we  all  admire,  and  which,  in 
spite  of  its  gaps  and  faults,  moves  many  of  us 
professing  Christians  to  penitence  and  shame. 
That  character  has  grown  from  four  foundations  : 
Belief  in  God  ;  the  sense  of  serving  a  great 
cause  ;  the  discipline  of  the  Army  ;  the  brother- 
hood of  soldiering.  The  Christian,  when  he 
realises  that  all  these  four  foundation  things  find 
their  crown  and  completion  only  in  Christ,  will, 
if  he  be  a  man  of  long  sight,  be  both  glad  and 
hopeful. 

1  This  book  deals  with  soldiers,  but  I  make  no  apology  for 
my  generalisation,  for  the  Army  represents  no  longer  a  special 
class,  Tommy  Atkins,  but  is  John  Bull  in  khaki. 


SEVENTEENTH    PAPER 

A   CONFESSION   AND   A  CLAIM 

READERS  of  these  papers  (vn-xvn)  will  have 
traced  in  them  a  strong  recognition  of  the  natural 
goodness  which  war  has  produced  or  evolved  in 
our  soldiers.  My  appreciation  of  the  deep  in- 
articulate Christianity  of  the  men  with  whom 
I  have  come  into  contact  fills  me  with  hope  for 
the  future.  At  the  same  time  I  cannot  disguise 
from  myself  that  the  formal  acceptance  of 
Christianity  has  sometimes  results  which  are 
far  from  satisfactory  in  the  present.  It  seems 
sometimes  to  brush  all  the  fresh  bloom  off  the 
natural  goodness  and  to  be  followed  by  a  blight 
of  self-righteousness  and  criticism.  These  two 
facts  taken  together  have  at  times  led  me  to 
grave  doubts  as  to  the  value  of  our  specific  work 
as  chaplains.  My  conviction  that  the  Church 
ideal,  the  common  allegiance  to  the  One  Master, 
is  the  only  solution  of  the  world's  divisions,  has 


224          PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

never  for  an  instant  wavered.  The  tragedy  and 
chaos  of  these  years  has  daily  intensified  it. 
The  facts  of  experience  have  however  at  times 
led  to  doubts  as  to  the  value  of  work  with  in- 
dividuals, a  haunting  fear  lest  we  should  incur 
the  condemnation  uttered  by  the  Lord  upon  the 
Pharisees.  '  Ye  compass  sea  and  land  to  make 
one  proselyte,  and  when  ye  have  found  him  ye 
make  him  tenfold  more  a  child  of  hell  than  your- 
selves.' Such  thoughts  have  led  to  a  feeling  of 
bewilderment,  a  doubt  as  to  whether  in  the 
present  state  of  the  Church  one  was  really  doing 
the  Lord's  work  in  seeking  to  bring  men  into  her 
fellowship.  We  want  them  to  see  the  Christ, 
too  often  I  have  felt  that  we  only  stand  in  their 
light.  That  is  my  confession,  and  as  soon  as  it 
is  made  I  would  withdraw  it,  and  point  out  the 
fallacy  which  should  all  along  have  been  obvious 
enough.  It  is,  of  course,  only  by  drawing  the 
best  into  the  Church  that  we  can  hope  for  that 
reform  and  revivication  which,  if  it  is  to  be  lasting, 
must  come  from  within,  and  it  is  only  by  Christian 
individuals  that  the  ideal  of  the  corporate  whole 
can  be  achieved.  Our  work  then  as  chaplains 
is  threefold,  to  provide  services  and  spiritual 


A  CONFESSION  AND  A  CLAIM     225 

ministrations  for  those  who  are  already  faithful 
sons  of  the  Church,  to  seek  to  bring  others  into 
the  great  Society,  and  to  help  men  in  their 
struggles  against  vice  and  temptation.  It  is  in 
this  last  that  the  power  of  definite,  articulate 
churchmanship  is  most  evident.  Young  men, 
living  an  unnatural  life,  under  war  conditions, 
have  one  or  two  temptations,  against  which  the 
struggle  is  extraordinarily  difficult.  I  do  not 
say  that  every  definite  churchman  stands  upright, 
still  less  that  every  inarticulate  Christian  falls, 
but  I  am  quite  sure  that  this  is  just  one  of  the 
things  in  which  definite  profession  of  allegiance 
to  Christ  gives  a  strength  which  a  vague  in- 
articulate Christianity  is  powerless  to  provide. 

The  world  is  in  travail.  The  Church  does  not 
stand  outside  critical  and  serene.  The  Church 
is  in  the  world  and  suffers  with  the  world.  She 
suffers  ;  and  to  suffer  is  to  learn.  Most  cer- 
tainly those  of  her  officers  who  have  served  as 
chaplains  are  humbler  men  than  they  were  three 
years  ago.  We  have  seen  not  only  our  own 
individual  weaknesses  and  failures,  but  we  see 
also  that  the  Church,  as  she  exists  to-day,  does 
not  yet  meet  the  needs  of  men. 

p 


226  PAPERS  FROM  PICARDY 

We  are  humbled,  but  also  we  are  hopeful. 
There  has  been,  in  these  years  of  war,  an 
enormous  shifting  of  values.  We  have  come  to 
see  that  the  things  that  matter  are  not  comfort, 
pleasure,  money,  or  success,  but  courage,  service, 
sacrifice,  and  enterprise.  We  are  much  nearer 
than  we  were  to  the  system  of  values  which  Christ 
taught.  The  gains  are  real,  therefore  we  are 
hopeful ;  but  they  need  securing,  therefore  we  are 
anxious.  They  will  not  consolidate  themselves. 

Because  the  world  is  in  ruins,  because  all  else 
but  Christ  has  failed,  we  are  confident  that  the 
society  which  has  in  her  the  spirit  of  the  Christ 
must  succeed.  Christ  is  the  Saviour  of  the 
world,  not  merely  of  the  individual  ;  before  His 
Church,  therefore,  lies  the  great  opportunity  of 
the  coming  years,  but  she  needs  men  through 
whom  to  seize  it.  She  needs  men  for  all  branches 
of  her  work,  but  before  all  things  just  now  she 
needs  men,  and  the  right  men,  as  her  ordained 
officers.  She  needs  the  sort  of  men  who  have 
shown,  in  this  war,  the  gift  of  leadership — the 
successful  young  company  commander  and 
platoon  leader.  These  are  the  men  we  want. 
They  do  not  come  in  any  numbers.  Why  ?  In 


A  CONFESSION  AND  A  CLAIM     227 

part,  perhaps,  because  the  career  of  an  English 
parson  does  not  seem  to  offer  them  the  oppor- 
tunities of  a  man's  life,  or  of  activities  worthy 
of  their  best  energies.  The  round  of  parochial 
business  does  not  attract  them.  It  does  not 
seem  worth  while.  Perhaps  it  is  not.  But  the 
future  is  tremendously  worth  while. 

When  the  Apostles  went  out  into  the  world 
to  gather  men  into  the  fellowship,  they  were 
not  thinking  only  of  the  handful  of  men  and 
women  in  Jerusalem  then  ;  they  were  thinking 
of  the  world-wide  catholic  fellowship  that  was 
to  be.  When  the  makers  of  modern  Italy  called 
men  to  the  most  heroic  enterprise  in  history,  they 
were  not  thinking  of  the  backward,  broken,  dis- 
membered states  that  then  were  Italy — but  of  the 
freed,  united,  triumphant  Italy  of  their  dreams. 

So  we,  when  we  call  for  men  to  serve  the 
Church  to-day,  we  are  not  thinking  of  the 
Church  of  England  as  we  have  known  it  in  the 
past,  we  are  not  thinking  of  her  often  trumpery 
and  trifling  activities  in  the  present  ;  but  of  the 
glorious  opportunity  that  lies  before  her  of  doing 
what  she  alone  can  do  for  the  refashioning  of  a 
broken,  ruined  world.  A  man's  work. 


Printed  by  T.  and  A.  CONSTABLE,  Printers  to  His  Majesty 
at  the  Edinburgh  University  Press 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

RENEWALS  ONLY— TEL.  NO.  642-3405 

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n 


LIC?  A 


LD  21A-40m-2,'69 
( J6057slO) 476 — A-32 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


YB  21282 


M31057B 


